Voices

Does it matter, anymore, which one of them wins? Will anyone even know? The next election is only two years away, by which point anyone who watched the BBC leaderships debate will still be so haunted by the program’s first 15 seconds that they will be incapable of any meaningful interaction with the world around them.I’ve watched it over twenty times now and I still don’t get quite how they did it. The camera moves. Someone in the audience can be seen moving their hand on their lap. So it’s definitely real life. But the two people, one of whom really will be prime minister in six weeks’ time, had been frozen in aspic. Liz Truss stared ahead, face fixed in a grin every bit as rictus as her arms, which stopped motionless, as if her puppet master had just seen a ghost.Sunak’s eyes seemed to widen and then narrow again. On the 10th viewing they actually seem to start speaking to you. Why are we doing this? They say. Are we absolutely sure this isn’t going to look very, very odd indeed?Mercifully, his chin moves a fraction at this point, bringing a vague ending to the longest, weirdest 15 seconds quite possibly in all television history.After that, sadly, it went very far downhill. It wasn’t just that it was puerile, rude, juvenile, irrelevant and ridiculous. It was all those things, and usually all of them at once, as well as entirely delusional.RecommendedRishi Sunak’s going to cause a recession, apparently. Liz Truss is going to pursue policies that will require interest rates to go up to seven per cent, which might not cause a recession but will result in very large numbers of people losing their house. That’s what both of them said about the other, anyway. And neither of them can possibly have a clue who’s right, because that’s economics. That’s the whole of the debate. It’s all unfalsifiable and so it can rattle on for six more weeks, with a lot more heat and precisely no more light.Liz Truss actually called Sunak’s assessment of her plans “project fear.” That one’s not going to get past a smart alec of Sunak’s calibre. Actually, he pointed out, “she was part of project fear, I wasn’t.”Truss squirmed. As you would do when you can feel yourself passing fully through the looking glass. There they both were, arguing about who was the biggest Brexiteer, about what a load of rubbish “Project Fear” turned out to be, at the very moment there’s a 4-hour queue at the port of Dover, precisely because “Project Fear” had always been project reality, but both the people who are going to be the next actual prime minister cannot possibly do any more than just pretend none of it is happening.(At the very end, Sophie Raworth asked both of them whether the queues at Dover had anything to do with Brexit, but this was the “quickfire” bit in which both were only allowed to answer with one word. They both said “no” and that was the end of it, even though the answer, absolutely unequivocally is “yes.” Yes yes yes yes yes. Yes, undoubtedly. As a matter of complete and utter certainty. But there wasn’t time for that.)Still, there wasn’t much time left for that kind of thing. The fact that it has become nigh on impossible for families to go abroad at the start of the school holidays, and it is absolutely definitely because of Brexit? No time for that. Far too boring. Instead we had six minutes on whether either of them would have Boris Johnson in their cabinet, to which the entire world knows the answer, on both counts, is no.And then there was the six-minute long segment on Liz Truss’s £4.50 earrings, and their contrast to a £3,500 suit Rishi Sunak once wore.Still, Rishi Sunak wants everyone to have the opportunity to buy a £3,500 suit. He wants everyone to be able to afford to go to Winchester College and, after that, ideally marry the daughter of a billionaire, because that’s what happens if you’re just prepared to work hard and make sacrifices.Rishi is a Conservative, after all. And that’s what being a Conservative is all about.Well, not quite. Actually the most “Conservative of Conservative values is sound money.” He said that. He didn’t quite extrapolate on whether spending £3,500 on a suit is the best example of sound money but that’s mere details.Sound money isn’t about buying the odd luxury. It’s about being responsible with money. Managing it carefully. Keeping a general eye on where it is. In a previous hustings, Sunak really did claim that his biggest weakness was “obsessing over small details.” And yet, somehow, he of sound money, apparently didn’t know where his own family fortune was domiciled. And nor did he realise, for almost six whole years, that he should have surrendered his US green card a very long time ago, and was paying large amounts of tax he didn’t actually owe. Yes, the “sound money” guy really was paying tens of thousands of pounds to US tax authorities, mainly for the privilege of not having to queue up at passport control with the foreigners when he lands in California.He had mastered one detail though. He had learned how to pronounce Faisal Islam’s name, which Liz Truss had not managed. Faisal Islam has been a correspondent on mainstream UK television news for very nearly twenty years. And, as is the custom, at the end of every single report he has ever produced, he says his own name. Which is Faisal Islam. And it’s pronounced Fye-sal. It rhymes with Bye-sal. So it was somewhat odd that Liz Truss called him Fayezel every time she addressed him, which was at least four times, entirely unbowed and unbothered by being very obviously the only person who was doing so.She must have heard Sunak, Raworth and Chris Mason him called Faisal – not Fayezel – twenty times or more. By this point, she must have decided she was committed. She was auditioning for the job of prime minister. To start calling the bloke by his actual name would have been a sign of weakness.Still, it was a prime time slot and there was plenty there for the casual punter to enjoy. Mainly, the denuded fact that the two of them visibly hate each other. Lots of people have absolutely no interest in politics whatsoever. But everyone loves to hear a middle-aged married couple having a blazing row and on that front they certainly didn’t disappoint.RecommendedNot quite the entire country has has the chance, this week, to spend several days in a hot car with a hated spouse while queuing up to go on an unbearable family holiday, and in that regard Sunak vs Truss did an excellent job of bringing their own personal band of mean-spirited and vitriolic loathing to the small screen. Long may it continue, though where it goes next, no one quite knows. In these kinds of low rent reality TV formats, producers have been known to stage an intervention long before it gets this toxic. The Tory party must know it has left it far too late. More

Tomorrow’s Budget will owe a lot to a fifth-century north African saint who is reported to have asked the Almighty: “God, make me good, but not just yet.”The chancellor says he wants to “level with the British people”. In words, maybe. But in deeds, not just yet. Instead, he will try to ensure that there is post-Covid economic recovery by continuing to “do what it takes” to support loss-making businesses and jobs, and to stimulate consumer demand through the remaining months of an unwinding lockdown.Rishi Sunak will do this by running a budget deficit in 2020-21 of around £350bn, close to 17 per cent of GDP, a level of deficit financing unheard of outside wartime and adding to the stock of public debt, already around 100 per cent of GDP.Because an omniscient God is also economically literate, He (or She) will understand that these war-time levels of borrowing are necessary – for a while. But He (or She) will also need reassuring, through the high priests of public finance on the Conservative backbenches, that “good”, in the form of balanced budgets and debt reduction, will return.To demonstrate good intentions, there will be some tax increases, not so searing as to choke off recovery but sufficient to demonstrate that the chancellor hasn’t become a high spending apostate. The tax increases will also need to signal that even such protected species as Conservative voters and donors will have to pay their share.Since the pandemic has forced businesses to close, creating an estimated 2.5 million unemployed (7 per cent of the labour force) and perhaps more, it is right that companies and workers are compensated. as they have been through business loans and furlough payments.But another key fact about the pandemic is that household savings, normally around 7 to 8 per cent of disposable household income, have surged to around 25 per cent. The public is very nervous about the future and, anyway, non-essential shops are shut. If the government did nothing more to offset the rise in private savings than merely lifting the lockdown restrictions, there is still a risk that it leaves a big hoard of savings and a shortage of spending, creating mass unemployment.The Budget deficit represents the state spending vigorously where consumers and businesses have been unable to spend. It now has to be gradually reduced as households get back to spending normally.One of the chancellor’s problems is that he doesn’t know how fast people will start splashing out: like a “coiled spring”, as Andy Haldane of the Bank of England predicts, or like a wet blanket if people are still frightened for their health or for their long-term financial position. Certainly, the spending limits for poor and indebted families could cancel out the coiled springs.The recovery, when it happens, will generate more revenue from increased spending and economic activity. But perhaps not enough to return to budgetary balance, especially as some lucrative tax generators like the City of London have been damaged by Brexit. So, other taxes are needed in due course.There are two quite different budget calculations, often confused in the public debate. The first is how quickly to get the “day-to-day” budget back into rough balance (excluding the £50 to £60bn of capital borrowing for investment, mainly in infrastructure, which almost everyone agrees is imperative).The second is when and how much to “pay back” government debt that has been accumulated in the pandemic. In fact, there is no reason to worry about this legacy debt. There is almost complete unanimity among economic policymakers, including the IMF and the OECD, that there is absolutely no reason to start “paying back” at this stage. Get the economy back to healthy growth and full employment, so that further debt no longer needs to be incurred. Then start worrying about the legacy.Astute readers will recognise that this is a very different argument from that advanced by the coalition government 10 years ago. Back then, debt was lower than today, but we were determined to get it down. There are several big differences between then and now, the most important being interest rates. Debt is more or less of a problem depending on how much it costs to service.In May 2010, the interest rate on government debt (10 year bonds) was 3.7 per cent and there were also real worries that they could rise much higher if markets panicked, as they seemed likely to do, since Britain was exceptionally exposed to the banking crisis. Today, interest rates are close to zero (0.7 per cent) and Britain is, thanks to the vaccine roll-out, better positioned to recover quicker than most countries.Still, the chancellor cannot ignore the level of public debt entirely, even though it is currently well under half the level Britain had emerging from the war or which Japan has today. Interest rates, and servicing costs, could rise in future. There was a shiver of fear about future inflation, and higher rates, in global bond markets last week: perhaps a premonition. Then, there is also the risk of some future disaster – a new pandemic; a financial crisis followed by recession – which could lead to another borrowing binge.It is these anxieties that will be used to justify a premature and misdirected “Austerity Mark 2”, which is already well underway. The government has cut the aid budget – in my view wrongly – so that Britain is withdrawing support from Yemen as it faces one of the worst famines in modern times. At home, it is planning – also wrongly – to reverse the £20 supplement to universal credit, badly needed by poor families. And the government has frozen public sector pay, which could lead to a confrontation with teachers, nurses and police officers later in the year.Tax rises are already in train, too. There are big increases in council tax planned to keep councils from bankruptcy and basic services from being slashed further. We undoubtedly need a property tax, not just for revenue but to help dampen the rampant and socially damaging escalation in property prices. However, council tax neither funds councils adequately nor taxes people fairly. It badly needs reform with higher bands and rates of tax that better reflect the value of property. Otherwise, it is just another tax on the less well off.The chancellor has also trailed the idea of not raising income tax and NI thresholds: potentially undoing the good work of the Coalition in lifting the lowest earners out of tax.Another tax rise baked in is the promised crackdown on freelancers through IR35. The aim is to widen the net of national insurance. Unfortunately, in order to catch a few serious tax dodgers, large numbers of self-employed contractors will be hit: people who have been among the biggest economic casualties of the pandemic.So far, so bad. The chancellor should instead be imposing NI on better off, working, pensioners (like me) who have been shielded from economic sacrifices during 2020. It would be reassuring, too, if there was a move to equalise income and capital gains tax; if corporation tax were closer to the OECD average; if digital businesses were to be properly taxed; and if carbon emissions were taxed effectively. None of these should inhibit business recovery if the increases are moderate. And they would convey a serious commitment to a fairer tax system.The obsession of Conservative backbenchers with tax cuts regardless of circumstances is economic nonsense. Labour’s sudden conversion to stopping all tax rises, while demanding more spending, is equally unconvincing and wrong.While the recovery is uncertain and interest rates low, it would be foolish to rush the process of deficit reduction. And the legacy debt from the pandemic can be ignored for the time being.But even St Augustine accepted that respite from uncomfortable truths is only temporary. In the end, decent services have to be funded by fair taxes. More

Boris Johnson isn’t promising to send coronavirus packing anymore. This time it’s going “back in its box”, which, given 492 people died of it yesterday, is at least partly true.Several epidemiologists continue to warn that until an effective vaccine is found, repeated lockdowns will be the only way of bringing the virus under control – so we do hope the prime minister has enough glib phrases left in reserve.Current death toll projections do not bear thinking about, but we imagine someone in Downing Street is putting a mark on a graph somewhere to mark the point at which Boris Johnson will no longer be able to publicly tell the coronavirus it’s going to get seen off, debagged or given a damn good rogering.Anyway. Things are going to be different this time, the prime minister was back at the Downing Street lectern to explain. He was also, as it happens, back to accidentally reveal that it is theoretically possible that the stresses of being the worst prime minister of all time, by an embarrassingly giant margin, are getting to him. His once lustrous albino-turd-emoji barnet now gives off a distinctly Father Cadfael vibe. Still, there is much to be said for a certain degree of constancy in these febrile times, so don’t panic, whatever happens with the mail in ballots in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, there’s still going to be a blonde narcissistic sociopath with a very poorly executed combover coming at you daily on the evening news.Evidently the prime minister thinks getting the coronavirus “back in its box” is easier than “sending it packing”. This isn’t going to be like the spring, he explained. The schools are going to remain open, so are the nurseries and the universities. And the virus is just going to have to understand that, and be a bit more reasonable about things this time. This four week break’s going to get everything sorted out in time for Christmas and granny can come over and the kids can come back from uni and the virus will be back in its box and everyone can just have a nice time.Or something like that, anyway. It is perhaps possible to speculate that even Boris is not backing his box putting-back-in-ability. Because this four-week lockdown also comes with an extension of the furlough scheme until April, at a cost of another £60bn or so, but who’s counting all that anymore?Yes, this time it’s different. It’s a four-week lockdown, definitely only a four-week lockdown, then we’re going back to the local tier system, that lasted less than four weeks before being replaced by a four-week lockdown.The problem with the tier system, you might recall, is that, as everybody pointed out, and not least Chris Whitty at the exact moment it was launched, is that it doesn’t work. It doesn’t actually slow the rate of infection, and no government minister, nor the prime minister, has explained how you’re meant to go down from a higher tier to a lower one, because the tiers themselves can’t do what they designed to do.Still, that doesn’t matter anymore, because all the tiers have been replaced with a four-week lockdown, and when that doesn’t work we’ll just have the tiers back again, and when they don’t work it’ll be time for another lockdown. And then there’s the tier system, and then another lockdown, and then the tier system and then another lockdown, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, back in our box. More

Dawn breaks on British politics with a news alert sent to the financial markets that local government secretary Robert Jenrick thinks a Cornish pasty is only a proper meal if served with chips or a side salad – and yes, it goes very much downhill from there.The morning after the night before was never going to be easy. The night before being Monday night, when Boris Johnson announced new coronavirus restrictions that were then disowned live on television by his own chief medical officer, who was standing next to him.It would then transpire that the new measures had actually been disowned far in advance of their announcement, and to make it clear, the prime minister’s group of scientific advisors published all the guidance they gave to the prime minister three weeks ago, about the urgent need for an immediate temporary lockdown, which he had declined to do.It meant that anyone whose job it is to defend the government (in other words, members of the government, because good lord nobody else is going to at the moment), was in an especially difficult position.On the usual morning radio and TV programmes, Robert Jenrick would have to explain why certain pubs could only serve alcohol with a meal, what did or didn’t constitute a meal, and why he thought these measures would make any difference at all. Since about March, the go to excuse offered by government ministers is that they have been “following the science” except this time “the science” has taken preemptive action to make sure absolutely everybody knows that it absolutely is not being followed. Quite the opposite in fact. Not followed but furloughed.So Jenrick could only say it was urgent that the government act now to control the spread of the virus, even though it hadn’t acted now. That it had to balance the risks to public health with the risks to the economy, even though it’s now abundantly clear that avoiding the tough decisions on lockdown only makes economic impact harder and longer later down the line.It would lead to Matt Hancock, standing up in the House of Commons, bravely facing down the rebels in his own party who don’t want any lockdown at all. There he was, dismantling the absurd logic of the “Barrington Declaration” scientists who say that herd immunity is the only way. Because there isn’t really any such thing as herd immunity. There is no naturally achieved herd immunity to measles, to flu, to all manner of things. Letting viruses rip through populations doesn’t actually make them go away. And besides, hundreds of thousands of people die.So there was Matt Hancock, making clear to all who listened that anyone who thinks you can just let this virus get out of control is wrong and mad, but also arguing that the scientists who think the only way to stop it getting out of control is to take urgent action not even now but three weeks ago have also got it wrong.And that actually, the only thing you can do, at this point, is to make pubs in certain parts of the north only serve alcohol with a Cornish pasty and chips and/or side salad. Because that is the way ahead at this point. You can expect to see it on a Downing Street lectern possibly within 24 hours.Hands. Face. Pasty. Chips/side salad.Such is the rage among Conservative backbenchers, that Covid-19 isn’t simply being allowed to run riot and it all be over and done with, that the prime minister was forced to address them all over zoom.Leaked reports suggest poor wifi connection meant much of the call was done in a chat window, with the actual prime minister telling Theresa May that he can’t allow business people to join the scientific advisory panel because it’s called “Sage not beige” and then chuckling to himself about it.This really is where we are. Make mine a pasty please, a very very large one. And don’t spare the chips either. More

There are currently more coronavirus patients in hospitals than there were on 23 March, when the first lockdown began, which is the clearest indicator of where we currently are, but there are at least two reasons that you definitely don’t need to worry.The first is that the government’s panel of scientific advisors have presented a package of measures it says must be introduced in order to suppress the exponential rise of the virus, and Boris Johnson has thought better of it.The second is that there’s a now a brand new “3 Tier system” for managing local lockdowns, and that when the new system was announced by Boris Johnson on live television, the chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, made sure he put on record that it was his view that the third tier doesn’t go far enough.It was toward the end of the press conference that Professor Whitty said very clearly that he is “confident” the Tier 3 measures “for the very highest rates, would be enough to get on top of it.”And it was right at the end of the press conference, that the Sage advice was published. That it was their view a two or three week lockdown should be introduced “immediately”, and that Johnson disagreed.Anyway, the tiers system. Without wishing to get too bogged down in the technicalities that everyone will ignore, Nottingham’s in Tier 2, Liverpool’s in Tier 3, you can only have a pint with a hot meal, and absolutely all this is based on the data provided by a test, trace and isolate system that doesn’t work and everyone’s decided it’s best to stop talking about.Watch moreEverything’s fine, in other words. Everything’s fine, in the cartoon dog gif sense of the word. The main thing is that Boris Johnson has done a little address to the nation. Things aren’t as bad as March, he explained. We know so much more about the virus now, about how it’s transmitted, about how to treat the disease it causes. It’s still slightly unsettling that evidently Johnson does still seem to think that it responds to his now unimaginably tiresome puerile schtick. We were invited, once again, to “squash” the rate of transmission. For some months now, I have been desperately trying to think precisely who it is that Covid era Boris reminds me of, and I think I now finally have it. It is the very much former BP boss, Paul Hayward, who somewhat memorably spoke of wanting to “get my life back” a few days after one of his oil rigs had exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, killing eleven people and turning an entire ocean black. A couple of days later, he would be photographed taking part in a sailing race.Being a seasoned but nevertheless poor liar, Johnson is never fully able to conceal the slight irritation that Covid-19 has really spoilt his fun. That 2020 really was meant to be all about him, and then along came this pandemic.It’s also especially revealing that tens of thousands of deaths are not considered the kind of thing worth suppressing the jester act over. A few years ago, I happened to be in the House of Commons for one of his  “resignation” speeches. The Churchill impression was out in force that day. The finger-pointing, the jaw-jabbing, the tragic grandiosity. But then, the subject matter that day was himself, and that stuff really matters.This was just, you know, some pubs are going to shut early somewhere or other in the north, I’m not doing the full lockdown because I can’t be bothered with the hassle, and if it all carries on spreading then it’ll be up to the mayor of Doncaster to sort it all out.It was, as responses to a re-emerging pandemic go, very much a case of “will this do?” And unfortunately for us, it is very, very much a case of unfortunately it will have to. More

Towards the end of the war, Adolf Hitler began to blame his coming defeat on his own men for the crime of not being dead enough, and this somewhat remarkable epistemological destination is where Boris Johnson has now arrived with regards to Covid-19.“Those who will remain after the battle are only the inferior ones, the good ones have all been killed,” the Fuehrer told his armaments minister, Albert Speer, while explaining how it would actually be better at that stage for them to burn what remained of Germany to the ground themselves, rather than let the enemy do it.And this really can now be known as the Boris Johnson defence.At this point, we should explain that he was in the middle of outlining his plan on how to stop the imminent second wave of the coronavirus when he made his startling admission.But that doesn’t quite make sense either. His plan is to shut the pubs an hour earlier. That’s it. Though he spoke at the dispatch box of the House of Commons for almost two hours, the plan, in its entirety, can be repeated in just under two seconds, so he wasn’t exactly in the middle of it, but somewhere in the central third of the two hours of supporting waffle that followed.Watch moreLabour’s Ben Bradshaw had asked the prime minister whether the fact that Germany and Italy had far lower death rates and far less severe lifestyle restrictions in place might be because “they have test and trace systems that actually work?”The answer that followed is not so much one for the history books as one for the Guinness books. Certainly, it is the most execrable thing this most execrable prime minister has ever uttered. If any past prime minister has ever come out with anything quite so toe-curlingly absurd then I, personally, have never heard it.Obviously, it was Bradshaw’s fault for “undermining confidence” in Johnson’s test and trace scheme that doesn’t work, but we’re well used to that particular flavour of garbage by now. All of Johnson’s failures instantly become the fault of the person pointing them out, the moment they do so. Boris Johnson refuses to apologise for ‘gross incompetence’ leading to restrictionsThis is his favourite rhetorical technique. If you told Johnson he had his flies undone, it would be your fault for undermining Next.Still, this is what you get when you elect a great orator as prime minister, only one whose techniques turn out not to have been honed beyond the standardised “you smelt it, you dealt it” construction.But the very best was yet to come, and alas we have little choice but to type it out in full.“Actually,” came the reply. “There is an important difference between our country and many other countries around the world: our country is a freedom-loving country. If we look at the history of this country over the past 300 years, virtually every advance, from free speech to democracy, has come from this country. It is very difficult to ask the British population uniformly to obey guidelines in the way that is necessary.”So there you have it. That really is the end of it. The Germans, the Italians, they are all so cowed, so timid, that they choose to live. It is only the freedom-loving Brits that have done their bit, not just for their own sake but for the greatness of mankind, and died entirely preventable deaths in their tens of thousands.It turns out that, actually, the “world-beating” test and trace system that’s five months and counting behind schedule – well, you don’t even need it. Not over here anyway. We’re too good for it. Test and trace? Maybe Johnny Foreigner wants test and trace but not the Brits. Oh no. No, thanks. Not in the home of free speech, democracy and rampant Covid-19, thank you very much.  There is, it turns out, not even any point in Boris Johnson trying to stop the spread of the coronavirus because decent, patriotic, freedom-loving Brits will just do whatever the hell they like, and quite right too.Watch moreIn fact, if you’re sitting there reading this, you should be ashamed of yourself. Why aren’t you dead yet? Because you hate freedom, that’s why, so sod off to Germany and don’t come back. That is, if they’ll let you in. All the good men are dead; only the inferior ones remain.Of course, it’s worth pausing to note Johnson’s little pause after he’d got as far as “democracy and free speech”. The next one coming down the slipway was “the rule of law”, but he’s currently in the process of legislating to allow his government to break that, and all his (non-invertebrate) legal officers have resigned over it.The day’s events had an inner consistency, in their own way. It might look odd that, on Monday, Johnson had his senior scientists give their own public briefing, where they showed a series of terrifying graphs to lay bare the seriousness of the situation in which we find ourselves. And that, on Tuesday, it would transpire that all Boris Johnson is planning on doing about it is shutting the pubs an hour early and making them table-service only.It might seem, to you and I and the rest of the disgraceful undead, that trying to bring down the national R rate by introducing one tiny new measure that is far less draconian than the ones that haven’t worked in Leicester, Oldham, Bolton and everywhere else in between, is kind of insane.But then, we would think that, wouldn’t we, because we don’t love freedom enough. There’s no point trying to tell the British what to do, so why should Boris Johnson even bother trying?All the good men are fallen. Only the inferior ones remain, and my goodness, one of them appears to have found his way into Number 10 Downing Street. More