Ryan Bourne: Sunak shouldn’t try today to restore pre-virus Britain. It’s gone – and we must now adapt.

What normalisation should mean is the return to a functioning market economy where our wants and needs are met in today’s circumstances.

Ryan Bourne: Why Tyrie’s attempt to make the Competition Authority more like Which? magazine was wrong

He wanted the CMA to be both an aggressive consumer champion and decision-maker – “too much prosecution, judge, and jury” according to some.

Ryan Bourne: Welcome to the Inefficient Economy

The Government can avoid worsening it. But that requires as bold a deviation from ordinary policy as the extraordinary relief efforts we saw before.

Ryan Bourne: A view so radical that some simply won’t see it. The driver of our problems isn’t lockdown. It’s the virus.

Impacts on the margin shouldn’t be used to mask the big picture: private activity mimicked shutdowns before they happened.

Ryan Bourne: Don’t fret about this debt – at least not yet. Big tax rises would choke economic recovery.

If it proves a temporary blowout rather than permanent, accumulated debt levels being modestly higher looks manageable.

Ryan Bourne: What is the Government using the shutdown for?

Absent a clearly articulated strategy business uncertainty will heighten, and severe non-compliance is risked

Ryan Bourne: A one-off income hit is temporary. The loss of a human life is permanent. We should tolerate the first to help save the second.

None the less, while lockdown alleviates the worst, it doesn’t deliver the best. The Government should probe less costly ways to achieve the same ends.

Ryan Bourne: The upside-world of virus economics. And why we free marketeers must adapt our usual ways of thinking.

The theoretical aim of policy then should be bridging over what is hopefully a short pause in activity – eliminating near-term distress for households and businesses.

Coronavirus 2) Ryan Bourne: Beware it being used as a cover for promoting socialism and protectionism

A home-focused industrial policy hardly saved China from this epidemic. And openness and markets ensure diversity of supply – particularly in medicine and food.

Ryan Bourne: The real Budget question on borrowing is not “could we?” but “should we?”

My answer would be “maybe, provided the spending or tax cuts significantly improved our growth potential.”

Ryan Bourne: The core challenge that Johnson’s Government won’t face up to. Boosting growth.

Ministers have been asked to push the Government’s priorities – tackling crime, funding the NHS, “levelling up”. How can these be effected without faster growth?

Ryan Bourne: The perils awaiting Conservatives who seek to reduce inequality

A new study by a former senior adviser to two Tory Chancellors gets itself back to front. Inequality is not so much a cause of processes as a consequence.

Ryan Bourne: The limits of weirdos and misfits

“Bad management” or “the wrong skills” or “incompetent people” are held up as the root cause of bad government.My central gripe is that I doubt this is true.

Ryan Bourne: Johnson’s policy prospectus is tainted by interventionism, statism, collectivism – and could be a lot worse.

We economic liberals should be cautiously thankful for the stay of execution that his leadership and manifesto have given us.

Ryan Bourne: Five myths about the Labour manifesto

Who will their taxes really hit? How much will they truly raise? And can this really be described as a ‘moderate’ agenda?