Rishi Sunak’s new plans to redress the cost of living crisis are substantial, but they should have been introduced much earlier
In politics, 2022 is already the year of the guilty euphemism. It’s the year in which Downing Street tried to airbrush an unlawful lockdown party as “a work event”. It’s the year in which the invasion of Ukraine was cynically misdescribed as a “special military operation”. And now, in Rishi Sunak’s latest emergency mini-budget, it is the year when the government prefers a tax measure to be known as a “temporary, targeted energy profits levy”. Good luck with that one, chancellor. To the rest of us, what Mr Sunak announced on Thursday is unmistakably a windfall tax.
As such, it is better late than never. In a better managed political and economic culture than ours, in which effective regulation of markets was accepted as desirable in itself and action was taken when it was most needed, the measures might have been viewed as those of a strong and confident government. After all, an overheated energy market has been reined in. The consumer interest has been prioritised. The poorest have been given special protection. And there is a recognition that, temporary or not, the emergency may last up to two and a half years. All this is welcome.
