No wonder Rishi Sunak is thriving under Boris Johnson

As you know, I misspent much of the past 20 years trying to understand and report on the excesses of the City of London that led to the banking crisis and everything that followed. There were two hedge fund managers who made a bundle out of the rise and fall: Chris Hohn and Patrick Degorce. I mention them because the new Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, worked with and for both of them.

The reason this matters is that Hohn and Degorce were so focused, relentless and masters of detail that they make Dominic Cummings seem like a soft dilettante. It is little wonder therefore that Sunak is thriving in what feels to me like the hedge-fund culture that has taken hold at the centre of government since Boris Johnson and Cummings took over.

This does not mean Sunak will be Cummings’s marionette, even with the creation of the new joint Downing Street/Treasury economic policy unit – whose members will be chosen by Cummings and Sunak, with none relying exclusively on Sunak’s patronage.

But it absolutely does mean Downing Street, the Cabinet Office and the Treasury will act more-or-less as a seamless unit, and the centre of government will be more powerful than at any time probably since the Second World War.