When we do emerge from this crisis how can Britain begin to rebuild its damaged economy and who will foot the bill? Austerity will not be the price of this pandemic.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/04/10/austerity-wont-price-pandemic/ (1/12)

The UK economy may contract by more than 30% in the 2nd quarter to June and our GDP over the year could shrink by 10%. To put that in context, the decline in GDP after the 2008 financial crash was 5% (2/12)

The Treasury have provided £330bn worth of lifeline loans for businesses, grants to sustain the jobs of millions of workers estimated at £40bn over 3 months, a £3bn a month in grants for the self-employed plus various sector deals (3/12)

Some on the left have been quick to warn of a new era of austerity to pay for the pandemic - a decade of spending cuts and tax rises that will dwarf anything that’s come before. They are, I believe, wrong on both counts (4/12)

The money the Chancellor has spent shoring up the economy, however massive, is a one-off injection. In that sense it operates like capital spending – not the day to day revenue spending of Government (5/12)

There will be some additional cost to servicing the debt but with interests rates so low that is likely to be something the Government can manage without the need for significant tax rises or a painful departmental spending squeeze. (6/12)

Parallels being drawn with the 2008 financial crash are misleading. Going into the crash the UK’s cyclically adjusted deficit was 5.2%, twice as high as the average advanced country. In contrast by 2019 it was just 1.3% (7/12)

We’ve gone from being among the worst prepared countries for an economic shock to one of the best. The incoming Government of 2010 embarked on spending restraint and tax policies to address the unsustainable weakness in the economy (8/12)

Assuming, which is a big assumption, that the Chancellor’s economic measures keep the economy above the water and the lockdown is lifted in weeks not months, the medium-term prospect may not be as bleak as it would currently appear (9/12)

It’s folly to suggest that many businesses won’t go under in this crisis, that many jobs won’t be lost, that the toll on many families across the country won’t be truly terrible (10/12)

But I don’t believe Britain should brace itself for another painful round of squeezed public sector spending or hugely hiked taxes (11/12)

A bigger state sector, higher taxes and more regulations are not the route to recovery – they will simply create a drag on the economy when it needs to rebuild quickly (12/12)