Last week Rishi Sunak presented his second Budget to the House of Commons. Today, three former Chancellors weighed in. Speaking at an online event hosted by the Institute for Government, Norman Lamont, Alistair Darling and George Osborne joined the Institute’s director Bronwen Maddox to discuss the state of the UK economy, and how their past experiences lead them to reflect on recent events.
There was a surprising amount of consensus from the panel – not on the best way to handle or manage the economy, but about what is politically possible. Fuel duty came up multiple times as an area of policy that doesn’t gel with the government’s stated commitments to a green agenda; yet it was, and continues to be, an area the former Chancellors agreed was off-limits.
It was also acknowledged that Sunak has a mountain to climb in the coming years, with none of the panel seemingly eager to be in his shoes right now.
The issue of tax increases revealed the most obvious divide between the Tory Chancellors
‘He doesn’t yet know what the economy is going to look like over the next five years,’ noted Lord Darling, while Lord Lamont struck a far more sympathetic tone: ‘The dilemma I had was exactly the same as Rishi Sunak: it was how do I give confidence that we’re going to get to grips with the deficit’ without ‘choking off the recovery?’
Of course, the current Chancellor is dealing with bigger extremes: an economy that’s experienced its largest contraction in 300 years and a deficit that reflects war-time spending.
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