Brief summary of reactions to Sunak: We have reached a point in the pandemic where confidence in an effective test and trace and/or imminent widely distributed vaccine has faded to the point where policy in now shifting to consequences of long-term COVID restrictions

Sunak asserted this at the very beginning of his speech. Given UK government's issues in delivering a test and trace system and uncertainty over the timeline of a vaccine or effective treatment for COVID this is perhaps a reasonable read of the balance of risks.

But we're still in a "one-foot-in-one-foot-out" pattern here since the announced measures are time-limited, modest in scale, and barely any focus on retraining/replacing lost jobs. Meanwhile, *nothing* on boosting unemployment benefits in the interim.

So we are invited to believe that government doesn't think most of the jobs of people still on full furlough under CJRS are coming back but that somehow the labour market can quickly reallocate unemployed workers - despite also acknowledging insufficient demand in launching JSS

There is a lack of joined up thinking here. And it needs to be resolved. If we are assuming restrictions are here for the foreseeable then wage subsidy/labour market support schemes need to be as open-ended. If not then *why are we assuming permanent shifts in employment trends*

What is the base case we are planning towards? How do we want firms and households to behave? Do we want unemployed workers to prioritise maintaining incomes or observing COVID restrictions? How are we reflecting that in policy?

These periodic "labour market saviour" moves by the Chancellor may make good headlines, but they betray a lack of strategy. The policies announced today will result in significantly higher unemployment for some time to come and a consequent compounding of the COVID hit to demand

And again, no word on addressing Universal Credit generosity while willfully pushing people into unemployment amid a pandemic. If the above makes me sound angry, that's because I am. They had time to do much, much better than this.