The chancellor appeared to have learned from the austerity disaster, but a glance beyond the short term shows he has not
Chancellor Sunak made much of his attachment to fiscal prudence in the run-up to last Wednesday’s budget – so much so that balancing the books seemed to become a moral crusade.
This worried a lot of people. As that great Treasury permanent secretary of yesteryear, Sir Douglas Allen (Lord Croham) once observed: what matters is not balancing the budget, but balancing the economy.
