The Government can’t deliver levelling up without more supply-side change, localism and public service reform.
It makes sense to focus on a private-sector recovery, but a low pay offer to NHS workers sits badly alongside a record deal for teachers last year.
The Budget was, if truly honest, a sign that the Government shuns spending cuts and embraces tax rises – which is ultimately unsustainable.
Conservative messaging implies an implicit belief that there are no major state functions ripe for reform in any fiscal repair.
It will probe whether or or not Sunak can prepare the country for that future – and perhaps succeed Johnson himself, “one fine day”.
Perhaps the simplest way of putting it is: it’s all about economic credibility, stupid. Because come 2024, it certainly will be.
We need to have a debate about which taxes are least damaging to economic growth. Over the long term, corporation tax ranks as being one of the worst.
One of an occasional series of articles that ConservativeHome is publishing in advance of the Budget.
All young people have been dealt a bad hand by the indirect effects of the pandemic – however, some are more equal than others.
This is not to say that all of Dodds’ analysis is coherent or correct, but the days of unhinged Corbynite attacks on capitalism are over.
The present social contract was written when the number of taxpayers well outstripped the number of retirees. But times have changed.
£3 trillion is £100,000 per household – we could have to spend double that. A switch to a command economy would also mean losing our freedom.
We have seen it in the context of Europe; we are seeing it in the context of Covid restrictions. We may more of it in tackling the public finances.
Talk of a new industrial revolution is all well and good, but the spirit that delivered the last one seems long gone.
Providing small businesses with technology and training will accelerate our recovery from Coronavirus.