Boris Johnson's 'loose change' is hardly Roosevelt's New Deal | Larry Elliott

FDR's expansionary' plan amounted to 4,300 per head; Johnson's to less than 100

It's easy to see why Boris Johnson wants to be seen as the new Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Like FDR, he is in charge of an economy in deep trouble. Like FDR, his sympathies are with the capitalist not the communist. Like FDR, he accentuates the positive.

So it was perhaps inevitable that the prime minister harked back to the New Deal of the 1930s when he announced in Dudley that higher spending on infrastructure was key to the UK's recovery from recession and to the government's levelling up agenda.