After a decade of forward guidance, credit easing and quantitative easing, it was clear even before the Covid-19 crisis that monetary policy had run out of road.
It represents an emergency call to arms – not a permanent transition towards a command society.
One area that has had relatively little attention, but could get much more, is the behaviour of commercial landlords across the country.
As a member of his first Cabinet, I was tested in Northern Ireland – as elsewhere the new government reduced the defict and reformed public services.
As the tenth anniversary of the 2010 election approaches, the author says that Labour’s own austerity record and plans were almost as tough as the Coalition’s.
The funding pressures are genuine. But expecting to be “fully” compensated by central Government is unrealistic.
When a drop in the curve of the virus is seen, the public’s health mustn’t be endangered by a blinkered pursuit of balancing the books.
Two extreme versions of what happens next in Britain. Events are more likely to end up somewhere in the middle.
The reason we will get away with it again, as we did in the banking crash, is that there is so much deflation around, inflation is not a problem.
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.
The implications of the crisis are such that Johnson and Sunak need not so much to think outside the box as to trample it to tatters altogether.
The fact that Darlington station was explicitly addressed in his statement is a great sign of how swiftly the Chancellor has mastered the detail of his brief.
It may be necessary, given the Coronavirus, and could even work. But Britain has a long, long record of state spending failing to turbo-charge growth.
“This is the Budget of a Government that gets things done…A Budget that delivers on our promises.”
The Coronavirus will punch a hole in Sunak’s sums sufficient to throw levelling-up, Boosterism, Brexit bonuses – what have you – off course.