Sunak’s stamp duty holiday hard to square with ’levelling up’ rhetoric | Larry Elliott

There was no need to put a rocket under the housing market. The consequences are now all too clear

Rishi Sunak's approval ratings tell their own story. The chancellor's stock is high, because the Treasury's furlough scheme has limited the job losses from the pandemic. But while Sunak has had a much better crisis than some of his colleagues, his record is far from flawless.

Two errors of judgment stick out: the eat out to help out" discounts for diners, blamed for a wave of infections last autumn, and the decision to raise the threshold on stamp duty for home purchases in England and Northern Ireland from 125,000 to 500,000.