Yes, it is more ‘meal deal’ than ‘new deal’ – but Sunak’s summer statement isn’t ALL bad
Rishi Sunak: his job could be hanging on the result of this plan. Shame it has already been sabotaged by his boss Boris Johnson.
It didn’t matter what Rishi Sunak was going to say in his summer statement because Boris Johnson, Matt Hancock and the other Tories had already sabotaged it.
Sunak’s objective is to save jobs while the UK works through the post-Covid recession, but his problem is that his colleagues’ insistence on easing lockdown means the Coronavirus isn’t over yet – no matter what Johnson says.
In this nation of shopkeepers (as Napoleon had it), if we want to keep people in their jobs, we need to keep spending money into – and through – the economy. That means going out and paying for things.
But the number of new infections in the UK is high – and will remain so, while Johnson insists on helping the virus infect other people by opening pubs, schools, and whatever else he’s planning next.
That means people are going to be reluctant to resume normal patterns of social consumption.
It’s going to be difficult in the extreme to restore confidence after these Tory blunders. After schools and pubs, Johnson can claim it is our social duty to go back out and spend until he is redder in the face than the gammons he represents, but the public will only hear him telling us to go out, catch the virus and die.
That’s the second hurdle that Sunak faces; thanks to Johnson, public trust in the claims of politicians is at an all-time low, being worsened all the time by his insistence on lying whenever the mood takes him and refusing to apologise when his lies are exposed.
So the ending of the furlough scheme in October is directly counter-productive; watch the number of redundancies increase when that month comes round and try to tell me I’m wrong.
The offer of a £1,000 “jobs retention bonus” is likely to fall similarly flat. The conditions are that employees must be carrying out proper work, and be paid at least £520 per month – the lower limit of National Insurance payment – and it seems unlikely that many employers will be able to manage this.
Similarly, the VAT cut from 20 per cent to just five per cent to help out restaurants, pubs, cafes, B&Bs, hotels, theme parks and cinemas may only have limited success. Who’s going to go, if there’s a chance they’ll catch a fatal disease?
Sector-specific stimuli such as this are a good idea – don’t get me wrong – and this would work if the number of Covid infections was much lower than it is (in England, at least) – and if more people were interested in wearing face masks, perhaps (how would that work, when they’re eating food?) – but as I’ve already mentioned, Johnson has put a stop to that with his ridiculous blunderings.
And the already-infamous “meal deal” voucher, offering 50 per cent of the cost of meals for everybody eating out between Monday and Wednesday, throughout August, may go hungry for customers. Here’s the reason:
Observe how enthusiastically Rishi Sunak announced 50% off for those who can afford to eat out, then remind yourself of the fact that 3 weeks ago a footballer had to shame the PM into feeding poorer kids over the summer. Disgraceful.
— Hasan Patel 🌹 (@CorbynistaTeen) July 9, 2020
On the other hand, raising the threshold for stamp duty from £125,000 to £500,000 might conceivably be a good idea, if it stimulates construction work as people are encouraged to buy new homes.
Possibly best of all the measures laid out in the statement was a scheme to create jobs for young people, subsidising six-month work placements for people aged 16-24.
If this is used to re-skill the workforce – actually preparing the UK for future opportunities – then it has enormous merit.
But I can see employers using it as a cheap alternative to the workers they already have. Why take just £1,000 over three months to keep on your current workforce when the Tories will give you a teenager for twice as long and pay all of their costs?
So my initial verdict is that this is final proof of the Conservative government’s economic illiteracy; they really couldn’t run a p***-up in a brewery.
But it would be wrong to pre-judge a plan that hasn’t gone into practice yet.
The sad part is that this may break Sunak but Johnson will laugh it off, no matter how disastrous the result.
Source: Coronavirus: Chancellor Rishi Sunak unveils £30bn plan to save jobs – BBC News
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Meanwhile, older unemployed people who have no chance of getting a job will still be subject to jobsearch conditionality and Sanctions, soon to be harassed by an army of new Work Coaches.
I don’t think there’s a hope in Hell that the Tory scumbags will re-skill the workforce by creating proper jobs for young people. There will be a lot of fine words at the start but out in the real world it’s just going to be yet another slave labour punishment scheme, a mechanism for setting people up to fail so their benefits can be sanctioned. The Tories just don’t know how to do anything else and remain as convinced as they ever have been that the way to get people back to work is to give them a good kicking while they’re already down – and no doubt Keir Starmer and the other Red Tories will be all for it too.
Well I’m sure as hell not going out for a meal in the current climate, meal deal or not!