Opinion: Can PM avoid falling flat as the rest?

I wish Rishi Sunak well. There is something inspiring about having an Asian Prime Minister of Hindu faith: this sends a positive message to my children and all children of Asian descent. Yes, you too can aspire to high office. There are no limits on your dreams.

Having said this, just because Sunak has lifted the lid on aspiration on one sense, doesn’t mean he isn’t going to be an impediment on others. He has warned us: there is going to be a tough budget ahead. There will likely be tax rises and spending cuts.

We do need to balance the books, but there is a question: what tax rises do we propose?

What spending will be cut?

If we cut spending on education, we hobble our future capacity to create wealth. If we cut spending on police, we exacerbate problems with crime. If we cut spending on the NHS, the queues at hospitals and for doctor appointments get longer. Cutting capital expenditure on infrastructure risks decay. Plus, we have already been through austerity once: what else is there to cut?

Taxes present a similar conundrum: the Tories don’t want a windfall tax or to tax the wealthy. So, who then pays? The most convenient source of revenue is VAT, which was raised to 20% by George Osborne but never went down. But raising VAT would contribute to a cost-of-living crisis which is already spiralling out of control: the prices of basic foods have gone up by double digit percentages. It has been reported that hospitals are running foodbanks for NHS staff.

Meanwhile, the Tories have stolen Labour’s thought that we ought to make the economy grow. However, their idea of creating growth is not by ensuring modern infrastructure or making sure our people have the right skills, but to provide tax cuts for the better off. But since that didn’t go down well with the markets, they are left with deregulation.

But deregulation of what? Loose regulations led to water companies dumping raw sewage into our waters.

I suspect that when it comes, the budget will be a muddle. It will probably not do what it intends, it will likely exacerbate our problems rather than remedy them. Any progress on controlling inflation will be presented as a victory: however, a recession tends to slow down inflation without outside aid.

No doubt the Tories in our town hall will try to spin any progress as a result of their efforts. It is far more likely that any improvement will be in spite of them.

I hope that I am wrong, and that Sunak is more courageous and a hard-headed realist than he has hitherto shown. I hope he realises that he cannot get out of his current conundrum by pursuing old Tory policies. I hope he will, but somehow, I doubt it. In which he case, he will fall as flat as his predecessor.