Last week, the British economic and financial system came very close to breakdown. However, the crisis of confidence in the financial markets and intense lobbying by the CBI and the TUC soon changed minds, none faster than the initially sceptical Sunak. The budget deficit in 2020-21 will comfortably exceed £200bn, to be financed, if necessary, by the Bank of England printing money. Johnson is too divisive a figure, too thin-skinned and too unserious to leadIt is wartime finance for wartime economic conditions. If not there will, as in wartime, have to be a national government (headed by Sunak with Keir Starmer as his deputy).

Source: The Guardian March 22, 2020 07:52 UTC