 |
| Half-price on me, anyone? |
It was yet another budget day and Rishi Sunak had progressively leaked most of it in advance. He is promoting himself as the most intelligent man in the cabinet, not an impressive accolade, and has been exploiting social media to sustain this image. His Instagram and Twitter accounts have even adopted a new font for his signature.
Unlike his predecessors: George Osborne, Philip Hammond and Sajid Javid, who had been scrooge-like in their custodianship of public services. Rishi Sunak was forced to splash the cash when dealing with Covid and declared he would do whatever it takes to address the pandemic. Covid spending has already exceeded £400bn and still rising. He presented several mini budgets as the grip of Covid tightened, ran up the largest debts in the post-war period of £355bn, and became the most popular chancellor since Dennis Healey.
However, his star began to wane when his Eat Out to Help Out scheme in August 2020 produced indigestion amongst the Sage group. It cost £849m, undermined the public health messaging and was found to have been a major reason for the second wave of the pandemic in October 2020.
He failed to provide furlough and income support for 3 million self-employed during the first year of the pandemic. His cavalier funding for PPE contracts that were let to companies recommended by Tory MPs and exempt from tendering processes, the phone app that never worked, and the Test and Trace initiative that was centralised instead of using established public health teams have all been hugely expensive failures that have diminished his stature.
These ill-considered spending sprees were then contrasted with his unwillingness to fund more than a 1% rise for nurses and his continued reduction of council funding which includes education and community care. His latest budget heralded £1bn for Town Funds, supposedly part of the government's levelling up Initiative. Detailed analysis by various think tanks discovered that 39 of the 45 towns receiving grants were to Tory-controlled constituencies including Richmond, Rishi Sunak's own constituency and Newark, the Community Minister, Robert Jenrik's constituency. It is a Rishi mystery how Cheadle, Bournemouth and Southport qualified for the Town's fund? His levelling-up claims have been seen as yet another example of how economical he is with the truth.
His proposal to introduce eight low-tax freeports is a reprise of Mrs Thatcher's previous attempt to introduce them as part of the package of deregulation. They proved largely ineffective and merely shuffled trade away from existing ports so that even David Cameron's government abandoned them in 2012.
His funding of Test and Trace will go down as one of the greatest financial scandals in the history of any UK government, although the responsibility for this will be shunted to the Health Secretary Matt Hancock and its serially incompetent leader, Dido Harding. But it was the Treasury under Rishi Sunak who authorised spending this avalanche of public money with minimal accountability and who is now reaping the consequences as he levels back on public spending.
His polished ingratiating persona has become tarnished even amongst the Tory right-wing supporters. They have realised that he is no magician, just another oleaginous accomplice to the prime minister. His latest budget has simply extended the inequalities that have been the enduring outcome of the austerity years. Levelling down is not just for Covid but the years that follow. Rishi Sunak's belief in Freeports, Brexit, Hedge Funds and the power of his social media presence is not going to change anything.
No comments:
Post a Comment
thanks