The Guardian view on Covid relief: a package of shortcomings | Editorial

The chancellor is abjectly failing to rise to the economic challenges posed by this public health emergency

A few days into 2021, and a large European country imposed yet another lockdown on its weary public. The leader of the governing rightwing party held out hopes for a mass vaccination programme, but insisted that in the meantime, non-essential shops and services must close and school pupils study from home. Not the UK, but Germany. Not Boris Johnson, but Angela Merkel. Our overwhelmingly parochial political debate nearly always ignores how countries very similar to our own can take far more imaginative and helpful measures. One of the first moves Chancellor Merkel announced this week was an extra 10 days' leave for parents to look after children - double that for single parents. As policymaking, it is a modest but useful step. As politics, it is smart. And as an attempt to gain beleaguered families' trust and their acceptance of the inevitable difficulties to come, it is deft.

Compare that with the tin-eared response from London's ministers. The day after Mr Johnson's imposition of a third lockdown, the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, unveiled a 4bn package of one-off grants for retail, hospitality and leisure companies. If your firm does the laundry for a big leisure centre or supplies crockery to cafes, you will have to jostle with every other business for a part of a far smaller 594m contingency fund. All the new support is aimed at businesses rather than their workers. For anything else, the Treasury will wait until its March budget.