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Still pretty enraged at this briefing from Sunak, so time for a hopefully cathartic angry thread... https://twitter.com/James_BG/status/1357226802758975489
Yesterday, while sources close to the Chancellor were presumably briefing garbled nonsense about his desire for an early as possible easing of lockdown, the boss of @CBItweets was delivering a remarkable and strangely underreported speech. https://www.businessgreen.com/news/4026692/cbi-chief-calls-economic-response-1945-tackle-climate-covid-threats
It's worth looking up, because it is utterly damning. It highlights how the response to the 2008 crisis led to low productivity, low business investment, regional divisions, and various social crises. "We need a better decade than the last," he said.
How do we engineer a better decade than the last? We need proactive, ambitious, and innovative government, alongside similarly ambitious and innovative business. We need something utterly unprecedented and bold.
We need to "force fresh thinking", to deliver a response "more like 1945 than 2008".
"Let's be clear - the scale of the shocks we're facing today - Brexit, Covid, and the climate imperative - demand a similarly dramatic moment of unity and foresight," Danker added. "Taken together, they make 2021 as pivotal a year as any we can remember."
As I said yesterday, it sounds more like @Ed_Miliband circa 2014 (and again now) than the boss of the UK's most influential business group.
What have we got from a government that is being told by its own traditional allies that it needs to deliver a post-war scale response?
Well, we got the furlough and accompanying schemes, which have burnished Sunak's reputation throughout this crisis, but which were nearly withdrawn too early and which still have some glaring gaps that have impoverished many through no fault of their own.
And as Sunak again eyes winding down that support, what of the stimulus plans that were announced months ago in other countries? What of the much trumpeted plan to 'Build Back Better'?
Well, there was Johnson's speech about wanting a Roosevelt-style New Deal last summer (remember that?). That came with £5bn of funding announcements equivalent to a rounding error in Roosevelt's plan. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/jun/30/how-does-boris-johnsons-new-deal-compare-with-franklin-d-roosevelts
Then there was a summer update from Sunak with £3bn for energy efficiency programmes and not a lot else.
And how are those efficiency programmes going? Really not well. https://www.businessgreen.com/news-analysis/4026383/kill-businesses-eventually-administrative-scuppering-green-homes-grant-scheme
And how are those efficiency programmes going? Really not well. https://www.businessgreen.com/news-analysis/4026383/kill-businesses-eventually-administrative-scuppering-green-homes-grant-scheme
This was all around the time France and Germany were announcing €100bn+ stimulus packages with multi-billion Euro carve outs for green infrastructure. Yes, there was some overlap with the UK's support schemes, but there was also lots of long term infrastructure moves.
Everyone was told not to worry because the PM's 10 Point Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution would deliver a proper stimulus. But when it came it amounted £12bn, only £5bn of which was new funding.
Again, there was lots of good stuff in there to leverage in private capital and state led investment is not the be all and end all. But as the CBI (the CBI!!!) says we need creation of NHS and welfare state type thinking. We're seeing none of that.
There's time to sort this, to provide the stimulus that lays the foundations for a net zero economy, boosts competitiveness, and averts an economic catastrophe and another lost decade.
But a month out from the Budget this is not the debate that is being had. The debate is instead about whether to roll the dice yet again on lifting lockdown recklessly early, while sources whisper about the implications for the deficit of school lunches and welfare uplifts.
Tl:dr if Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak really want to Build Back Better he needs to get a grip fast and recognise the true scale of the challenge. They could do worse than start by listening to @CBItweets
You don't get to be Roosevelt just by parroting the words 'green recovery' and 'new deal'. You've got to act at a level the historic moment requires.
