Rishi Sunak will be missed as Chancellor

We will never know the counterfactuals of the past few years. What if another MP had been made Chancellor when Sajid Javid resigned (the first time)? What if a green chancellor Rishi Sunak hadn’t had a pandemic to manage? While we can’t answer these questions, it’s hard to imagine any MP – certainly on the left, even on the right – taking fiscal responsibility as seriously as Sunak did when he had the permission of his party – and politicians the world over – to throw it out the window. I suspect it won’t take long for us to start missing the former Chancellor and the critical role he played in taming the Prime Minister’s spending habits. 

Overseeing the public finances and financial support schemes throughout the pandemic made Sunak a household name, and also a subject of controversy, especially within right-wing circles. The furlough scheme became one of the biggest costs of the pandemic, which saw millions of Brits have their salaries paid by the state.