The urbane chancellor, who used always to look in command, was brittle and edgy in the Commons
- Coronavirus – latest updates
- See all our coronavirus coverage
I suspect that even Rishi Sunak is struggling to keep up. He is the chancellor with the budget box of many colours. At a rough count there have been at least eight different statements to announce new furlough measures since March, even if only five have ever been fully implemented. Three job support schemes in his winter economy plan have flatlined and been scrapped even before they were due to be introduced. It’s hard to know if he even agrees with himself any more and hasn’t just been bullied into the changes by the prime minister.
With this rate of attrition, it’s becoming increasingly hard to know which government measures to take seriously and which to ignore. On Thursday morning the justice secretary, Robert Buckland, blamed the public’s failure to comply with restrictions as the prime reason for the second national lockdown. It didn’t appear to have occurred to him that many people might have thought the government was just having another of its funny turns and would have reversed the lockdown by the time so many had got round to breaking it.
