Current situation: phasing back in restrictions while phasing out the economic support. Not going to fly.
Task now is to 1) learn the lessons from economic support policy in the first lockdown while 2) recognising this time is different
Lesson 1: if you want people to help us collectively save lives you have to save their livelihoods (7in8 workers don’t currently qualify for £500 quarantine payment)
Lesson 2: risking up restrictions is not a national lockdown so policy needs to be more targeted - we’ve basically just told the hospitality and leisure sectors they are stuffed. Concentrate support there
Lesson 3: the last six months did happen... e.g a firm that took a subsidised loan to get through the first lockdown still has that on their books. Worse balance sheets = less role for loans in getting firms through this time
Lesson 4: this should put to bed all the v-shaped boosterism nonsense. Focus on helping people through the very real awfulness of the months ahead - not being distracted by wishful thinking
Lesson 5: problems we fudged in round 1 won’t have gone away - the balance of losses between landlords and tenants from income falls stands out. On both the residential and commercial property side of things we’re hiding from the problem via eviction bans rather than resolving it
Since people are raising it - this is not an argument for just continuing the furlough scheme as is. The answer now is different to April/May because the problem is ie we're not putting the whole economy on ice.
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