‘Corbyn is led by ideology, I’m led by economics’: Sajid Javid’s spending plan

If Boris Johnson wins next week, it will be on a manifesto of change. He will not deliver the fourth term of the same Tory government, he says, but a new agenda guided by a new philosophy — and the big difference will be spending. Gone are the days when Tories defined themselves by a determination to balance the books. Sajid Javid, the Chancellor, promises a ‘new economic plan for a new era’, which would mean investment on a scale that would have made George Osborne baulk. Providing, of course, that his party is still in government by the end of the next week.

‘There is a path to victory,’ he says when we meet while he is campaigning on the outskirts of Birmingham. ‘But it’s a narrow path. I can’t help but think of what happened in 2017 when most polls indicated the Conservatives were ahead. And look what happened.’ But last time, he says, the Tories were complacent. ‘We’re going to be out there fighting for every single vote.’ And they have a new message: the austerity era is over, and a new plan of spending will begin. Yes, funded by debt. But this time, it will be different.

Sajid Javid’s life story is, by now, pretty well-known. The son of an immigrant bus driver, he scraped into sixth-form college then, after Exeter University, had a successful career as a banker. His time in finance persuaded him that there has been a big shift in global debt markets — one that he says will keep interest rates at rock-bottom for ten years or more.

So any investment likely to boost economic growth by a half-decent amount will be worthwhile, because the cost of borrowing is next to nothing. This is his ‘new era’. ‘Look at the demographic change going on across the world: people living longer, baby boomers getting older, retiring with a lot of assets compared to the previous generation,’ he says.