Doctor Rishi prescribes soothing course of cash

At a moment of worry and uncertainty, “Doctor” Rishi Sunak soothed the nation’s fevered brow by dabbing it with an unending supply of £10 notes.

He had £30 billion worth of them, all from that little red box of his.

His bedside manner was reassuring. Your coronavirus will have a significant impact, he told the patient. But it will be temporary.

It’s going to be difficult, but I’m confident that you will recover. And I’m going to do whatever it takes to get you through this. I’m going to get things done.

That was his theme, by the way, in the Commons. This is a Government that gets things done.

In practice what it means is a big injection comprising a variety of measures to support people and businesses as the country deals with the personal, social, and economic consequences of coronavirus.

“I’m announcing a £30 billion fiscal stimulus to support British people, British jobs and British businesses.”

If that doesn’t help, it is quite in order to have a drink. Because one of the things the Chancellor of the Exchequer was proud to announce was those areas in which he wasn’t going to do anything.

Ambition

In other words, instead of putting duties up on fuel, beer, wine and cider, he is not going to put them up. Cheers.

Levelling up was another theme. Talent was evenly spread across the country, he said, but opportunity was not, and that needed to be fixed. His Budget heralded “a change of the whole mindset of the Government”.

He added: “To make sure economic decision-making reflects the economic geography of the country, we are reviewing the Treasury’s Green Book.”

I’ve not read it myself, but I’ve heard that it starts well and then begins to flag.

“Our ultimate ambition is to move 22,000 civil servants outside central London.”

Harrow, or somewhere like that, then. But if they are transported further afield, you can picture the scene as they depart in convoy – coachloads of bowler-hatted figures, peering uncertainly through the windows at the unfamiliar landscape, perhaps fetching up in places like Stoke-on-Trent which, the Prime Minister informed us at PMQs earlier, “is the crucible at which the future of this country is going to be forged”.

Boris Johnson also trailed the Budget by saying: “There is about to be an infrastructure revolution in this country which will help the West Midlands and Dudley in particular.”

Did he mean by that “the West Midlands – and Dudley in particular” or “the West Midlands and Dudley, in particular.”?

A punctuation point that might make a big difference to Dudley. In particular.

Austerity

What it turned out to be in the Chancellor’s statement was more money for the NHS, more money for infrastructure schemes, more money to pour into potholes, and “we are protecting beautiful villages in the Welsh borders as we finally build the Pant-Llanymynech bypass”.

“Well done,” chirruped an unknown voice, probably commenting on him getting the pronunciation right.

He had money to put right all the damage caused by the recent devastating floods as well.

There would be £120 million available immediately to repair the damage to flood defences, to support repeatedly-hit areas there would be £200 million going directly to local communities to build their “flood resilience,” and there would be a doubling of investment in flood defences over the next six years to £5.2 billion.

He made some economic forecasts, which I forecast will be all proven wrong. And I don’t need to be an expert to predict that. You just have to look back at Budget forecasts in the past and see how they matched up to what actually happened.

As he sat down he was loudly cheered by the Tory benches, and slapped on the back and shoulder, which must still be safe to do under health guidelines.

In his response, Jeremy Corbyn said they all had to work together to overcome coronavirus, but the Conservatives had left the public services on their knees, talk of levelling up was a cruel joke, austerity was a failed experiment, and Errol had starved to death in one of the richest countries in the world.

And in Scotland, according to Ian Blackford apparently everything will be better if it becomes independent.

Incidentally the Commons seemed packed, which might prove the last time for a while if the prediction that up to a fifth of the workforce could be off work at any one time proves correct.