Some things are more important than the coronavirus. You’d have thought that once the junior health minister Nadine Dorries had announced she had caught it, some members of the government – Boris Johnson and Matt Hancock among them – might have chosen to self-isolate. For everyone else’s safety as much as their own. Other workplaces have shut down for less.
But this was Rishi Sunak’s Big Day Out. A chance for the 16-year-old school prefect doubling as chancellor to splash the cash, to show that the “people’s government” really did care for the lower orders every bit as much as it did for the hedge funds that had bankrolled its election victory.
So the entire cabinet squeezed themselves along the front bench to cheer him on. Boris and Matt did their best to look really, really well – “There’s nothing wrong with us, guv” – while Psycho Dominic Raab discreetly coughed into his hands. No one passed him a tissue. Or a face mask. Rather they tried not to look as if they had noticed, while slowly edging themselves away. Keep Calm and Carry On. Ish.
Sunak began by announcing £30bn of measures to help the country get through the coronavirus epidemic, a serious amount of cash that rather suggested the government believes the situation is going to be a great deal worse than it has up till now been prepared to let on.
Everyone thought it best not to mention the fact that the NHS might be in a far better place if the Tories hadn’t cut public services relentlessly for the past 10 years. The UK has fewer than half the intensive care beds of almost every other EU country. Or that people on zero-hours contracts were still vulnerable. Then we are at a new Year Zero where austerity never happened. The mere mention of George Osborne or Philip Hammond is enough to get you disappeared.
A wiser chancellor might have cut his losses after the coronavirus announcements. Just explain we were on the verge of a recession even before we had entered a crisis situation, so there were too many unknowns for any sane economist to make any credible future spending plans. So turn this into an emergency budget, with the promise of a follow-up when he had a clearer picture or what he was dealing with. There again, it might just be handy to have the coronavirus to blame when everything else goes tits up. You win some, you win some.
In any case, Rishi had another 45 minutes of Noises Off am-dram theatrics to get through. It’s always the politicians with the least charm and charisma who feel obliged to go on the longest. He waved his arms about, told a couple of shit gags and indulged in a bit of call and response. “We got Brexit done,” he squeaked. “What else are we getting done?” “Absolutely everything,” replied the Tory benches, reading from the Boris hymn sheet.
And in a way they were. Boris looked thrilled. Priapic, even. There’s nothing he likes more than wholesale spaffing. After a while even the Tory benches got into the swing of things. If this had been a Labour chancellor announcing the very same measures, the Conservative MPs would have been having a full-on Venezuelan Marxist heart attack, but as it was their boy they collapsed with multiple orgasms.
There was no end to Rishi’s rabbits. Literally anything anyone had ever wanted, they could have. Hospitals? As many as you like. Trains, planes and automobiles? Go for it. Schools. Houses. Booze. Toys. Things. Stuff. There wasn’t really a plan for any of this, but there sure was the cash. Not just for infrastructure projects but also for day-to-day spending.
Sunak had no idea where any of the money was coming from – it sure as hell wasn’t coming from his own pocket, as he intended to hang on to the fortune he’d made at Goldman Sachs – but the £600 health surcharge on every immigrant was a decent start. The rightwingers in his party would be salivating at the prospect of cracking down on a few foreigners. Who said this wasn’t a budget for everyone? All the chancellor knew was there was unlimited cash for everything. Apart from the things there wasn’t cash for.
Just about the only Tory not to enjoy the occasion was Sajid Javid. The former chancellor looked thoroughly miserable throughout. This was Sunak stealing all his best lines. Even the ones about sticking to the fiscal rules with a view to ignoring them at a later date. Rishi was on the up – a possible leader in waiting – while the Saj was going nowhere. Having an unexpected fit of conscience suddenly didn’t look like such a good idea after all. He should have dumped his Spads and taken the glory.
As usual, Jeremy Corbyn replied for the opposition. Though he may as well not have bothered. He is already three months past his sell-by date and no one in the Commons pays attention to a word he says. Even Corbyn appears to be bored by Corbyn. He made little effort to engage with anything Sunak had said and just read from his prepared script in a morose monotone.
There again, almost no one would care much about the budget by the end of the day. Within hours the World Health Organization had declared the coronavirus to be a global pandemic and that many governments had been too slow to act. The UK being a possible case in point. Sic transit gloria Rishi.
