The announcements made today are a positive continuation of our existing environmental policy, and a fine example of the Prime Minister’s pragmatic, and somewhat unsentimental approach to the major issues of the day.
The barrage of letters and calls that some people struggling to make ends meet are receiving is causing grave distress —in some cases, it is even contributing to people becoming suicidal.
The package isn’t about permanent intervention in the market. It’s smoothing the edges of a particularly sharp adjustment in family budgets.
Most importantly, remember this. Keep going through all the disappointments. It is the most interesting job you are ever going to have.
We should never forget the millions of people who are “just about managing” – they will find it harder to budget over the next few months.
We need a mid-term review that is honest about the after-effects of Covid – and where we now find ourselves.
Without it, we won’t be able to have better public services, less debt and lower deficits, or a fairer deal for younger people.
We need to stand up for the value of Parliament and of spending time there improving and working on legislation.
For all the focus elsewhere, the most important domestic department for the next two years will be the Department of Health.
We know how difficult it was to lose millions of manufacturing jobs – let us beware of inadvertently accelerating the same process for services jobs.
We need to rethink our foreign policy not in the world we would like, but in the world we actually live in.
We need to focus on developing our brightest and most talented people, in a range of different fields, from a young age.
My view is that the only way to help square this circle is to rediscover our concern for public service reform.
To those who say that election year budgets should offer short-term giveaways, I say this: history tells us that the British public is much too smart and much too sceptical to be bribed.