Rishi Sunak’s budget spending spree could come at a high price
Once more we are fighting a war with borrowed money, only this time it is not to rescue the villainous banking sector from its excesses. Now Britain will sink its few pennies and more into treating victims of the coronavirus, rescuing businesses losing customers and staff in equal measure, while plugging holes in a financial system that panics more often than Dad's Army's Corporal Jones.
This time is different, says the new chancellor, Rishi Sunak, who last week laid out an expansive and overtly confident sweep of measures to tackle the Covid-19 outbreak and do much else besides. He outlined plans in the government's first budget to spend 12bn on battling the virus while opening up two new fronts. First of these was an attack on austerity and the UK's worn-out public services, with a further 18bn of spending; second was a revamp of the nation's infrastructure, costing 600bn.
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