That schooling can improve earning potential doesn’t mean that ever-more schooling is good for all kids in the aftermath of a pandemic.
Which is what comes of the virtue-signalling practice of setting targets in law, rather than having MPs vote on expenditure.
Once inflation arises, reversing course is difficult. Businesses shut down or relocate, unemployment soars and we enter an economic contraction.
The centre isn’t where he or ConservativeHome or anyone else wants it to be. It’s where it is – “Far From Notting Hill”.
What we need is to promote a higher wage, higher productivity economy. Our economic targets should reflect those aims.
Looked at in the round, over the 2010-2016 period, the UK had the joint highest growth for a G7 economy, level with the US.
The Government can’t deliver levelling up without more supply-side change, localism and public service reform.
Providing small businesses with technology and training will accelerate our recovery from Coronavirus.
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.
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.