Rishi sunak

As ministers grow increasingly confident that they will be able to unlock by 19 July, Boris Johnson is facing a series of other political problems coming up the track. After the party lost the Chesham and Amersham by-election to the Liberal Democrats, Tory MPs with seats in the south are particularly restive. CCHQ has spent the weekend reaching out to these MPs in a bid to offer reassurance that the party has not forgotten about them. Yet the biggest problem Johnson faces is on spending. The spending review in the autumn will see all these various debates playing out Over the weekend, there have been a series of reports of

The Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, isn’t normally given to waffle, which makes his maiden appearance on GB News all the more remarkable. Asked by Andrew Neil who – government or homeowner – would have to pay the estimated £10,000 per household cost of replacing domestic gas boilers with heat pumps to help reach the target of net zero emissions by 2050 Sunak replied:  ‘So when you say the alternative is the household or the government, the government’s money is the people’s money. And that’s my point when I say ultimately we all pay. The government does have any separate money of its own’ As a general point of political philosophy, it

NHS England boss Sir Simon Stevens’s final speech today was watched online by hundreds of health service bigwigs. But its main audience was much smaller. It was aimed squarely at just two people: Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak. Stevens’s main message was about funding. The government, and, in particular, the Treasury, may not be thrilled once they wrap their heads around his statement on the five-million-strong (and Covid-predating) NHS backlog that ‘when the health service is given the backing and the tools we need, we can deliver what’s required’. Translated into plainer language, Stevens was saying: ‘Get your wallets out: this is going to hurt’. The mega-hint here is clear: Sir Simon

Labour’s Liz Kendall is today calling for the government to treat social care in the same way as it treats physical infrastructure. In a speech this afternoon, the shadow care minister said that ‘in the century of ageing, social care is as much a part of our economic infrastructure as the roads and the railways’. This is quite a challenging analogy, as the state of the social care sector would make even the most outdated and crumbling parts of the northern rail network look pretty luxurious and well-appointed. Kendall is also speaking as a battle rages within government over whether social care reform will make it into the Queen’s Speech.

Remember the days when David Cameron was the sleek young prime minister who had brought to an end 13 years of Labour government and Boris Johnson was just a clown on a zipwire? There seemed little doubt that Dave had won the race between the Bullingdon Club contemporaries for the glittering prizes of political life, seizing the chance to fashion a moderate Conservatism for the modern age. Boris, the great entertainer, was destined to be a far less consequential figure – a squanderer of his own talents. The Greensill affair underlines the perils of rushing to premature judgment. But while it is perfectly obvious that Boris now has the most

To what extent do workers want to return to the office? It’s a question on everyone’s mind – none more so than Rishi Sunak. If Covid working habits stick post-lockdown, with a majority of people continuing to work from their living room, it’s not just the working day that will be fundamentally altered, but the wider economy too. The economic implications for the shops and services designed to cater to the office worker will be drastic: large parts of city centres and high streets may find themselves without customers, or enough business to turn a profit. But these were not the main points the Chancellor made in his interview with

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme this morning, Andrew Bailey threw his support behind one of the more optimistic scenarios for a post-Covid economic recovery: that the UK will be back to pre-pandemic levels by the end of the year. The combination of the UK’s hugely successful vaccine rollout combined with increased levels of lockdown immunity – that is, the economic impact of restrictions ‘reducing as we all adapt’ – had the Governor of the Bank of England suggesting that we could see a full recovery by the end of the year (notably earlier than the Office for Budget Responsibility’s Budget forecast of roughly the middle of next year). Bailey

Last week Rishi Sunak presented his second Budget to the House of Commons. Today, three former Chancellors weighed in. Speaking at an online event hosted by the Institute for Government, Norman Lamont, Alistair Darling and George Osborne joined the Institute’s director Bronwen Maddox to discuss the state of the UK economy, and how their past experiences lead them to reflect on recent events. There was a surprising amount of consensus from the panel – not on the best way to handle or manage the economy, but about what is politically possible. Fuel duty came up multiple times as an area of policy that doesn’t gel with the government’s stated commitments

Rishi Sunak’s tax hikes pack a punch: by 2025, over £19bn is estimated to be raised from the freeze to the personal tax threshold, and a staggering £50bn from a new, tiered corporation tax structure. That’s a lot of people out of pocket, and businesses diverting their profits away from workers and consumers and towards the state. Criticisms of the cash grab are splashed across the front pages of the papers today. Across the pond, the Wall Street Journal has lambasted Sunak’s policies: ‘Britain’s political class, and especially the governing Conservative party, prides itself on fiscal rectitude. So Mr. Sunak already faces pressure to “pay for” all this relief. We

Rishi Sunak’s planned corporation tax hike is a reminder of the importance he sets by trying to put the public finances on a sounder footing. He think that his room for manoeuvre in this crisis has been, in part, because the public finances were in reasonable shape before it.  The vaccination programme remains this government’s most important economic policy As I say in the magazine this week, his concern about debt has long been about the cost of servicing it (which remains low) rather than its precise level. But the debt pile is now so large that small movements in interest rates have big consequences. But straightening out the public