The COVID Diaries – 91 27th June
Former Prime Minister and Chancellor Gordon Brown said (writing in the Guardian):
When a crisis hits, effective governments do two things. The first is obvious: they deal with the immediate challenge. The second is harder: they anticipate the fallout and then set about working out how to tackle the consequences, looking months or even years ahead.
But ………. the Treasury – panicked by the likely scale of the debt and deficit and now politically micromanaged from No 10 – seems to be in its own virtual lockdown. Having acted as the generous economic dove of spring, it is now, sadly, on course to be the tax-raising fiscal hawk of autumn and is in danger of losing sight of its overarching responsibility as a powerful force in economic government and not just a bookkeeping finance department.