It’s time for Rishi Sunak to stand up to Boris Johnson

Finally the pandemic fog is lifting and the outlines of post-Covid politics are starting to take shape. While the Government is perfectly capable of generating many more unfortunate headlines by mishandling the Covid exit wave – or indeed, in the case of Matt Hancock, ignoring the ‘hands, face, space’ rule – it is clear that one key relationship will largely determine its longer-term fortunes.

It is that between off-the-cuff scruff Boris Johnson and his immaculately turned-out Chancellor, Rishi Sunak – the man in the ironed mask.

The time is fast approaching when Sunak’s own reputation will be on the line and when simply deferring to the PM’s predilections will no longer be a sustainable way of running the Treasury, no matter how smooth the Chancellor’s public patter.

During the emergency phase of the pandemic it was easy for Sunak, ‘unencumbered by dogma’, as he said himself, to go along with Johnson’s big-spending instincts. It was also the sensible thing to do to stave off a depression and it largely worked.