People will focus on the £50bn+ cost of the Job Retention Scheme, but the real challenges with what the Chancellor has announced today are different. Three stand out...
1. Refusing to treat the hardest hit sectors differently is unwise given that this crisis is at its heart a sectoral one - much more than previous recessions. Accountancy firms and pubs are definitely not in this together
2. The Chancellor talks in very definite terms about the timetable for changes to economic policy month by month. In reality that policy should be dependent on what actually happens in our attempts to reopen the economy while avoiding a second outbreak of the virus.
3. Winding down these targeted support schemes needs to coincide with stepping up a whole raft of broader economic policy: Jobcentres moving from claims processing to back to work support, job guarantees for the young, government directed green jobs & broader fiscal stimulus
You can follow @TorstenBell.
Tip: mention @twtextapp on a Twitter thread with the keyword “unroll” to get a link to it.

Latest Threads Unrolled: