War in Ukraine has made the already gloomy economic prospects even more desperate. Sunak needs to act, and big, if we’re to check a freefall
The old adage is that if you’re not leftwing at 20 you have no heart, if you’re not conservative 30 years later you have no head. But from the treatment of refugees to the management of the economy, no one of any age can have a head and be conservative in 2022. For our times, conservatism is just plain wrong.
As the country confronts the acute stagflation of the years ahead, it will look for very different economic leadership from the warmed-up Thatcherism that, it’s becoming clear, is chancellor Rishi Sunak’s core philosophy. Economic prospects in 2023 and 2024 were dire enough before the consequences of Putin’s murderous war. Now they are desperate.
