The Guardian view on Rishi Sunak: back to the future | Editorial

The chancellor's speech signals that he wants to debate spending cuts, not increases

Rishi Sunak is the Conservatives' most modern politician in terms of style. But he is traditionalist in substance. In his conference speech, the chancellor extolled the virtues of good housekeeping to sell the idea that he would balance the nation's books. The household analogy is a powerful one in politics because it seems to correspond to everyday observations about thrift. But it makes no sense to compare personal experience with the economics of a nation. The late Roy Jenkins, two decades after serving as a Labour chancellor, rightly said Margaret Thatcher was trading in lousy economics when she sold herself as a prudent housewife able to save Britain from Labour overspending.

I think it is nonsense," he told the BBC, because there is an essential difference between the position of a family budget and the national budget, and that is that on the whole a family cannot increase its income by increasing its spending, whereas a nation, a government, by increasing its spending [can] substantially increase the total of the national income". It speaks volumes about how much of the debate around political economy has been conceded to the right that the current Labour shadow chancellor could not match the unapologetic Keynesianism of Lord Jenkins.