Rishi Sunak is no Gordon Brown

How at home Rishi Sunak looks in the company of academics. The chancellor delivered the 34th Mais Lecture this afternoon at the Bayes Business School in east London. Standing at the lectern in his dapper blue suit, he had the air of a cerebral super-monk bred on figs and yogurt. He’s the first British chancellor to hold an MBA from Stanford and he seemed perfectly at ease in this warm, well-lit room full of brain-boxes with double-firsts in economics.

He speaks their jargon fluently. Instead of a ‘job’ he talks about ‘an employment outcome ’. His term for a ‘career’ is ‘a fulfilling professional experience.’ And when he refers to education he says, ‘upskilling’ or ‘support for learning.’

He began by referring to two bewitching notions that promise to solve all our economic woes. Those on the left argue for ever larger state expenditure which will generate growth eventually. Right-wingers claim that tax cuts are the answer because they pay for themselves.