Rishi Sunak

description: British Conservative Party politician, Chancellor of the Exchequer since February 2020

24 results

pages: 277 words: 81,718

Vassal State
by Angus Hanton
Published 25 Mar 2024

38055-1/presidential-economic-address. 23 ‘Global advisory board’, Pimco [website], https://www.pimco.co.uk/en-gb/global-advisory-board; ‘Alistair Darling elected to Morgan Stanley board of directors’, Morgan Stanley [website] (8 December 2015), https://www.morganstanley.com/press-releases/alistair-darling-elected-to-morgan-stanley-board-of-directors. 24 ‘George Osborne’, 9Yards Capital [website], https://theorg.com/org/9yards-capital/org-chart/george-osborne. 25 Mark Sweney, ‘Former chancellor Sajid Javid takes new role at JP Morgan’, Guardian (18 August 2020), https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/aug/18/former-chancellor-sajid-javid-role-jp-morgan-adviser-us-bank-mp-conservative. 26 ‘Kwasi Kwarteng’, Wikipedia [website], https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwasi_Kwarteng. 27 Annabelle Dickson, ‘Boris Johnson’s parting shot: “Stay close to the Americans”’, Politico [website] (20 July 2022), https://www.politico.eu/article/stay-close-americans-boris-johnson-parting-shot/. 28 ‘Chancellor Rishi Sunak held US green card until last year’, BBC News [website] (8 April 2022), https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-61044847. 29 Peter Walker et al., ‘Akshata Murty may have avoided up to £20m in tax with non-dom status’, Guardian (7 April 2022), https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/apr/07/rishi-sunaks-wife-says-its-not-relevant-to-say-where-she-pays-tax-overseas. 30 Rupert Neate, ‘Rishi Sunak and Akshata Murty join UK rich list with combined £730m fortune’, Guardian (20 May 2022), https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/may/20/sri-and-gopi-hinduja-named-uk-richest-people-james-dyson. 31 Kiran Stacey, ‘Labour accuses Rishi Sunak of angling for job after Elon Musk interview’, Guardian (3 November 2023), https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/nov/03/labour-accuses-rishi-sunak-of-angling-for-job-after-elon-musk-interview. 32 Tomas Malloy, ‘Tata Somerset gigafactory: UK government’s huge “£500m” battery plant subsidy explained’, SomersetLive [website] (22 July 2023), https://www.somersetlive.co.uk/news/somerset-news/tata-somerset-gigafactory-uk-governments-8616044. 33 House of Commons International Trade Committee, ‘Inward foreign direct investment: third report of session 2021–22’ [PDF], Parliament.uk [website] (21 September 2021), https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm5802/cmselect/cmintrade/124/report.html. 34 House of Commons International Trade Committee, ‘UK investment policy: seventh report of session 2017–19’ [PDF], Parliament.uk [website] (24 July 2019), https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/cmintrade/998/998.pdf, quoted ibid. 35 David Ricketts, ‘City stalwart Lord Grimstone lands Bain advisor role’, Financial News [website] (28 September 2023), https://www.fnlondon.com/articles/city-stalwart-lord-grimstone-lands-bain-advisor-role-20230928. 36 Joanna Partridge, ‘Behold London’s “landscraper”!

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See Sebastian Klovig Skelton, ‘Government R&D funding fails to maximise “catapult” potential’, Computer Weekly [website] (5 February 2021), https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252495926/Government-RD-funding-fails-to-maximise-catapult-potential. 23 John Brownlee, ‘This is how ARM saved Apple from going bust in the 90s’, Cult of Mac [website] (25 May 2011), https://www.cultofmac.com/97055/this-is-how-arm-saved-apple-from-going-bust-1990s/. 24 Hermann Hauser, ‘Letter: Arm sale will hit Europe’s technological sovereignty’, Financial Times (24 August 2020), https://www.ft.com/content/4970848d-7821-45dc-b8cb-211036be5d30. 25 EIT Digital, ‘Hermann Hauser on venture capital for deep tech competitiveness and EU tech sovereignty’ [video], YouTube [website] (20 December 2021), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17kULzySxCI. 26 Quoted in Mark Sweney, ‘UK chip designer Arm chooses US-only listing in blow to Rishi Sunak’, Guardian (3 March 2023), https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/mar/03/uk-chip-designer-arm-chooses-us-only-listing-in-blow-to-rishi-sunak. 27 Author’s research, mostly based on reviewing companies’ 10-K Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings. 28 A. J. Chavar, ‘Why you keep using Facebook, even if you hate it’, Vox [website] (11 April 2018), https://www.vox.com/videos/2018/4/11/17226430/facebook-network-effect-video-explainer. 29 Quoted in Brad Stone, The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon (London: Transworld, 2013). 30 ‘How much is Amazon Web Services worth on a standalone basis?’

pages: 254 words: 75,897

Planes, Trains and Toilet Doors: 50 Places That Changed British Politics
by Matt Chorley
Published 8 Feb 2024

He embarked on a career in academia, and later as a private secretary in Whitehall. First elected as an MP in Leeds in the post-war election of 1945, he was a minister within two years and chancellor of the exchequer by 1950, just five years after entering the Commons – a meteoric rise later matched by Rishi Sunak. He experienced life in opposition for the first time in 1951, when Churchill returned as PM. After Attlee went on to lose the 1955 election to Conservative Anthony Eden, he resigned. Gaitskell became Labour leader of the opposition, winning the support of more MPs than his opponents Aneurin Bevan and Herbert Morrison combined.

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A star, and a star’s approach to preparation, was born. Other Old Etonians whose dramatic skills were better honed on Anderson’s watch include actors Damian Lewis and Dominic West. Anderson kept on moving. In 1995 he became rector of Lincoln College, Oxford, where one of the students during his time was his fourth future PM. Rishi Sunak was studying philosophy, politics and economics and graduated with a first in 2001, the year after Anderson had returned again to Eton, this time as provost. Having just missed Prince William during his time away at Oxford, he was at Eton for much of Prince Harry’s later years as a pupil. During his stints at Eton Anderson combined a traditional conservatism with an understanding of the need to modernise, including abolishing the cane and sending his privileged pupils into poorer inner cities for visits.

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Recent political history is littered with ditherers who hoped to obtain the crown while hoping someone else would do the dirty work – just ask David Miliband or Penny Mordaunt. Yet Gordon Brown spent a decade doing a lot of wielding while Tony Blair was in Number 10 before taking the crown himself. Boris Johnson’s weapon was rarely sheathed. Even Rishi Sunak, who was initially punished by Tory members for knifing Johnson in the summer of 2022, got there in the end. And if Major had had better teeth, he might have lost the keys to Number 10. Bathrooms 8 Patrick Jenkin’s toothbrush, Highgate Tuesday, 15 January 1974 People power is important.

pages: 432 words: 143,491

Failures of State: The Inside Story of Britain's Battle With Coronavirus
by Jonathan Calvert and George Arbuthnott
Published 18 Mar 2021

The enmity continued to bubble over, with allies of the spin doctor briefing that Javid’s nickname was ‘Chino’ – an acronym for ‘chancellor in name only’.2 In late January, there were more media briefings designed to undermine Javid, with claims that Cummings was ‘writing the budget’ himself.3 So the prime minister’s ultimatum during the reshuffle was the final straw for Javid and he tendered his resignation. His tenure as chancellor had been the shortest since 1970 – just 204 days. Within hours Johnson had replaced him with Rishi Sunak, who had been Javid’s second-in-command as the chief secretary to the Treasury. Smart, confident and only 39 years old, Sunak was a Brexiteer through and through who didn’t mind that his advisers would be run from Downing Street. Although he came across as being capable, he cannot have been prepared for the extraordinary decisions he would have to make as chancellor as the virus gathered pace over the next month.

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One was the wife of an ally of Vladimir Putin. It was that sort of party. David Ross, the Carphone Warehouse founder who had arranged Johnson’s holiday in the Caribbean a few weeks earlier, auctioned a grouse-shooting party on his country estate. Donors could also dubiously buy access to the new chancellor Rishi Sunak by sharing a box with him at Lord’s for an England versus Australia one-day cricket match. The secretary of state for justice, Robert Buckland QC, was offering, somewhat unappealingly, lunch served in a prison. Whether that was the correct use of Her Majesty’s prison service was an interesting point.

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It is an extraordinary fact that each day that passed that week before lockdown, the health service’s burden was increasing by a third. The complacency that had allowed Johnson to sail through February believing coronavirus to be a medically ‘irrational panic’ was rapidly dissipating. His government was panicking and nothing showed this more clearly than the chancellor Rishi Sunak’s big gesture on the afternoon of Tuesday 17 March. Sunak was the new Clark Kent in town, but he was not acting as the caped defender of libertarianism and free trade that Johnson had spoken about in Greenwich six weeks earlier. He was turning on the money tap with the biggest ever state intervention seen in peacetime.

pages: 357 words: 132,377

England: Seven Myths That Changed a Country – and How to Set Them Straight
by Tom Baldwin and Marc Stears
Published 24 Apr 2024

Both Labour and Conservative governments have spent hundreds of millions of pounds in recent years improving the Promenade, strengthening sea defences and revamping its tramway system. Public funding, including from the European Union, was also used to rescue key attractions including Blackpool Tower and the Winter Gardens which were at risk of going bust. Blackpool was visited four times by three different prime ministers in 2022. On the same day as Rishi Sunak arrived in November that year, his government announced a multi-million-pound bailout for the redevelopment of the old railway station which had stalled because of a lack of funding.67 In recent years, much of this has been done under the name of ‘levelling up’, a slogan for a set of policies which aim to make the poorest parts of England as prosperous as the richest.

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For every David Cameron, George Osborne or Boris Johnson who dressed up in royal-blue tailcoats with ivory lapels as part of the Bullingdon Club dining society, there was a nerdier Jeremy Hunt or Ed Davey. They were followed by Liz Truss campaigning for the Liberal Democrats and against the monarchy and Rishi Sunak running a university-wide society for playing the stock market. There were the Miliband brothers – pick David or Ed – or an Andrew Adonis, donning Marks & Spencer jumpers to think serious thoughts. There was the very religious Ruth Kelly, who briefly dated the elder Miliband, and James Purnell, who was at the same college as Yvette Cooper who got married to Ed Balls, a Norwich City fan at a different college.

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Inside, the most famous exhibit – shrunken human heads with lips sewn up and hair cascading – has been removed from public view as part of the museum’s ‘decolonisation plan’. Later, walking up the High Street, we take a sharp right turn, round the back of the college where David Cameron studied politics and the front of one where Rishi Sunak did the same, then emerge on to Broad Street. This is where the college that educated Boris Johnson has, we are told, taken down its portrait of one old prime minister so it can avoid having to put one up of him, too. We go past a giant Victorian spire which rises up to remind anyone interested that this was where a Church of England archbishop was burned at the stake four and a half centuries ago for beliefs these days shared by barely one in eight of England’s people.

pages: 334 words: 96,342

The Price of Life: In Search of What We're Worth and Who Decides
by Jenny Kleeman
Published 13 Mar 2024

id=10.1371/journal.pone.0261759 compared with 2019 ‘Alcohol-specific deaths in the UK: registered in 2020’, Office for National Statistics (7 December 2021). https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationand community/healthandsocialcare/causesofdeath/bulletins/alcoholrelateddeathsintheunitedkingdom/registeredin2020 during lockdown ‘Shifts in alcohol consumption during the pandemic could lead to thousands of extra deaths in England’, University of Sheffield (26 July 2022). https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/news/shifts-alcohol-consumption-during-pandemic-could-lead-thousands-extra-deaths-england calls and contacts ‘A year of lockdown: Refuge releases new figures showing dramatic increase in activity’, Refuge (23 March 2021). https://www.refuge.org.uk/a-year-of-lockdown/ same calendar period Smith, Karen Ingala, ‘Coronavirus Doesn’t Cause Men’s Violence Against Women’ (15 April 2020). https://kareningalasmith.com/2020/04/15/coronavirus-doesnt-cause-mens-violence-against-women/ same period in 2019 ‘Serious incident notifications’, Gov.uk (15 January 2021). https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/serious-incident-notifications/2020-21-part-1-apr-to-sep a televised address The televised address where Cuomo says this can be viewed at ‘“How much is a human life worth?” Cuomo questions the costs of reopening’, ABC7 New York (5 May 2020). https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/much-human-life-worth-cuomo-175254762.html ‘whatever it takes’ ‘Speech: Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak on COVID19 response’, HM Treasury and The Rt Hon Rishi Sunak MP (17 March 2020). https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/chancellor-of-the-exchequer-rishi-sunak-on-covid19-response The Spectator Wood, Simon, ‘Covid, lockdown and the economics of valuing lives’, The Spectator (3 October 2020). https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/how-much-does-it-cost-to-save-lives-from-covid £550 billion https://obr.uk//docs/dlm_uploads/CCS1021486854-001_OBR-EFO-October-2021_CS_Web-Accessible_v2.pdf ‒ Table 3.30 three million ‘Direct and Indirect Impacts of COVID-19 on Excess Deaths and Morbidity: Executive Summary’, Table 5, Department of Health and Social Care, Office for National Statistics, Government Actuary’s Department and Home Office (15 July 2020). https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/907616/s0650-direct-indirect-impacts-covid-19-excess-deaths-morbidity-sage-48.pdf landmark report Marmot, Professor Sir Michael; Allen, Jessica; Boyce, Tammy; Goldblatt, Peter; and Morrison, Joana, ‘Health Equity in England: The Marmot Review 10 Years On’, Health Foundation (February 2020). https://www.health.org.uk/publications/reports/the-marmot-review-10-years-on 1 in 19 chance Spiegelhalter, David and Masters, Anthony, Covid by Numbers: Making Sense of the Pandemic with Data (London: Pelican Books, 2021) still rising Wood, Simon N. and Wit, Ernst C., ‘Was R < 1 before the English lockdowns?

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‘The question comes back to how much is a human life worth. That’s the real discussion that no one is admitting openly or freely, but we should. To me, I say, the cost of a human life – a human life is priceless, period.’ The British government held the same view. In his public statement on 17 March 2020, Rishi Sunak, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, promised to do ‘whatever it takes’ to see the UK through the crisis. ‘We will support jobs, we will support incomes, we will support businesses, and we will help you protect your loved ones. We will do whatever it takes,’ he said. He repeated ‘whatever it takes’ six times in this single address, and it became a kind of catchphrase for him during the pandemic, a mantra.

pages: 314 words: 81,529

Badvertising
by Andrew Simms

Guardian (2020) Sir Jim Ratcliffe, UK’s richest person, moves to tax-free Monaco. 25 September. www.theguardian.com/business/2020/sep/25/sir-jim-ratcliffe-uks-richest-person-moves-to-tax-free-monaco-brexit-ineos-domicile 16. Energy Live News (2022) INEOS offers to drill fracking test well. 9 September. www.energylivenews.com/2022/09/09/ineos-offers-to-drill-fracking-test-well/ 17. Guardian (2022) Rishi Sunak will keep ban on fracking in UK. No 10 confirms. 26 October. www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/26/rishi-sunak-ban-on-fracking-uk-no-10 18. Cyclingtips (2019) What does Ineos have to gain by sponsoring a cycling team? https://cyclingtips.com/2019/05/what-does-ineos-have-to-gain-bysponsoring-a-cycling-team/. Guardian (2019) Yorkshire village faces petrochemical giant in anti-fracking fight. 11 June. www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jun/11/yorkshire-villagepetrochemical-ineos-fracking.

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A moratorium on fracking in the UK was lifted by the Conservative government using the excuse of energy security following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and volatile energy prices (this, despite energy analysts pointing out it that could not, in any meaningful way, contribute to the UK’s energy security, and there being far better ways to deliver that). When they did, Ineos quickly offered to drill a test site for free to demonstrate the potential for fracking.16 Although, amidst the turmoil of British politics, one month later another, new Conservative prime minister, Rishi Sunak, reimposed the moratorium.17 Hydraulic fracturing, commonly known as fracking, is a technology which involves the process of high pressure horizontal drilling as a way to extract oil and gas from rock formations. The method is particularly controversial given its high risks of water contamination with chemicals used in the process, the potential for earthquakes at the drilling sites and carbon leakage in the mining process.

pages: 371 words: 137,268

Vulture Capitalism: Corporate Crimes, Backdoor Bailouts, and the Death of Freedom
by Grace Blakeley
Published 11 Mar 2024

But the firm’s request for emergency funding was rejected on the grounds that firms that lend out money to other firms were not eligible.82 This was Cameron’s time to shine. He fired off a number of texts to then-chancellor Rishi Sunak and several of his senior advisers, lobbying them to pressure the bank to change the rules governing the scheme.83 Cameron sent a message to the permanent secretary to the Treasury, Sir Tom Scholar, claiming to be “baffled” at Greensill’s exclusion and asking to arrange a phone call. In a message to Rishi Sunak, Cameron said it was “nuts” to leave Greensill out of the CCCF.84 The chancellor was not convinced and did not reply to most of the former PM’s texts.

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,” August 9, 2021, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-56578838. 84. “Newly Released Texts Reveal Extent of David Cameron’s Greensill Lobbying,” BBC News, May 11, 2021, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-57074690. 85. Peter Walker, “Rishi Sunak Told David Cameron He Had ‘Pushed the Team’ over Greensill,” The Guardian, April 8, 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/apr/08/rishi-sunak-told-david-cameron-he-had-pushed-the-team-over-greensill. 86. Press Association, “Greensill: British Business Bank’s ‘Woefully Inadequate’ Checks Put £335m at Risk, Say MPs,” The Guardian, November 20, 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/nov/20/greensill-british-business-banks-woefully-inadequate-checks-put-335m-at-risk-say-mps. 87.

pages: 534 words: 157,700

Politics on the Edge: The Instant #1 Sunday Times Bestseller From the Host of Hit Podcast the Rest Is Politics
by Rory Stewart
Published 13 Sep 2023

In Parliament I might have found common cause with a whole right-wing faction of the party, the very faction that I would need if I were ever to run for the leadership – for absurdly somehow even in this most junior of junior positions, I was already occasionally asking myself if I could be the successor to Cameron’s successor. Rishi Sunak, with whom I shared a table in the House of Commons library, chose to endorse Brexit. There was something bold and surprising in such a move, from a man who always seemed the epitome of caution and sensible ambition: the kind of unexpected move that Machiavellian politicians made to win. He was adored by his northern constituency and by much of the party for doing so.

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In other words, short sentences increased, not reduced, the risk to the public. Abolishing short sentences would, I believed, radically reduce our prison population and leave calmer, better-ordered prisons, and less offending outside. I began by trying to end the practice of sending people to prison for not paying their council tax or TV licences. Rishi Sunak was the junior minister whose department was responsible for sending people who owed council tax to jail. He had been a minister for only six months. We often talked in the library. I thought we both enjoyed our conversations, and that on this he would be helpful. He entered the underground committee room fast, flashing a tense smile, and took a seat at the head of the table.

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How can it make sense to do something as extreme as sending someone to prison for not paying their council tax?’ ‘I can think of many reasons.’ ‘Prisons are horrifying places,’ I persisted, ‘violent, filthy and overcrowded. They make people more criminal.’ ‘That,’ he retorted, ‘is hardly our department’s fault.’ The hour ended with our relationship bruised, and Rishi Sunak unconvinced. Having failed to get his department to voluntarily alter their policy, the only remaining option was to introduce primary legislation. I proposed a law to ensure that people convicted of crimes with a maximum sentence of six months could not be put in prison at all: failure to pay a council tax bill would no longer be an imprisonable offence.

pages: 557 words: 154,324

The Price Is Wrong: Why Capitalism Won't Save the Planet
by Brett Christophers
Published 12 Mar 2024

As excitement about ‘ESG’ (environmental, social and governance) investing has mounted over the past decade, there has been growing discussion about the volume of ethically minded capital ostensibly standing ready to support green investment opportunities as and when they arise. In 2021, for example, the UK’s then Chancellor Rishi Sunak conjured the image of a ‘historic wall of capital for the net-zero transition’. The following year, Mark Carney, previously governor of the Bank of England and chair of the international Financial Stability Board (FSB), but since 2020 taking the finance sector’s coin in his role as head of ESG investing at Brookfield Asset Management, similarly invoked a ‘wall of opportunity in just rolling out clean energy at scale’.29 But, as Carney’s one-time colleague at the FSB, Dietrich Domanski, reminded people in early 2023, the small matter of profit remains something of a thorn in ESG’s side.

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Moreover, as had been the case with Texas and Bank of America, such recipients, the Economist further cautioned, ‘may in fact sit outside the energy market’.37 Flummoxed by the complexity, some European countries briefly shelved their plans to impose such windfall taxes. Having announced in May 2022 that he would introduce such a tax, for example, Rishi Sunak, then the UK Chancellor, indicated just a month later that he had cooled on the idea, his officials signalling that it ‘was proving to be too complicated to instigate’.38 Others, however, pushed ahead, Germany among them. Country-specific taxes within the EU, such as Germany’s, were to some extent superseded in September 2022 when the bloc’s energy ministers agreed an EU-wide windfall tax on non-gas power producers (including, but not limited to, renewables operators), taking the form of a revenue cap set at a maximum of €180 per MWh.39 To apply in the period from 1 December 2022 to 30 June 2023, revenues earned above that threshold were to be redistributed to electricity users.

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‘In the past, the big driver for renewables was decarbonisation,’ Edurne Zoco, executive director for clean energy technology at the financial analysis firm S&P Global, remarked in early 2023. ‘What has changed since 2022 is that energy security has also become a big driver of policy for renewables – especially solar.’62 Thus when, for example, in November 2022, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak pledged to accelerate the UK’s switch to renewable energy, he did so explicitly on the ground of energy security and environmental benefits – not cost benefits. Energy security, similarly, explicitly inspired renewed vigour in renewables investment in 2022 in countries ranging from Greece to Denmark, and from Switzerland to the Baltics.

pages: 371 words: 122,273

Tenants: The People on the Frontline of Britain's Housing Emergency
by Vicky Spratt
Published 18 May 2022

Their landlords – local authorities and housing associations, as opposed to private individuals – generally stuck to the government’s guidance not to evict people. The extent to which successive governments: At the time, I reported on this for the i Paper. You can read more here: ‘When it comes to housing during coronavirus, Rishi Sunak’s claim that “we are all in this together” isn’t true’, 16 April 2020, inews.co.uk/opinion/housing-coronavirus-renting-rishi-sunak-418924 The Chancellor’s support package: Vicky Spratt, ‘Coronavirus help for renters: The assistance available if you are renting in the UK’, i Paper, 27 March 2020, inews.co.uk/opinion/coronavirus-rent-help-government-uk-home-pay-assistance-how-claim-explained-412072 you can buy a flat in Dorrington Court: www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/71201970#/ or rent one privately: www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/70771572#/ Macintosh’s work, her vision: Pre-war, most council housing was for those on middle incomes.

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If a supplier goes out of business, they cannot pay their debts and people lose their jobs. If a landlord starts to worry about their financial future, they decide to have a crack at charging their tenants more and, if the tenants can’t pay, move to evict them. On 11 March 2020, a new Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, talked the nation through his first budget less than a month into the job. Building affordable housing – which housing experts agreed was urgently needed – barely got a mention. Just one week later, the coronavirus crisis had become so serious that the government had started giving daily wartime-style televised press conferences.

pages: 940 words: 16,301

Routes to Rejoin
by Stay European
Published 3 Oct 2021

The finance sector is publicly unpopular, to say the least, but it provides an estimated 11 percent of UK tax revenue and over a million jobs, according to the Office for National Statistics. The government made reassuring noises about negotiating a finance sector deal (known as ‘financial equivalence’) later in 2021, only for chancellor Rishi Sunak to admit at the start of July that the government has given up on equivalence, and make statements about deregulation that make it even less likely. Having previously relied on the City of London as a financial centre, the EU appears to be quietly trying to build up its own hubs, to lessen its reliance on infrastructure it can no longer regulate.

Uncomfortably Off: Why the Top 10% of Earners Should Care About Inequality
by Marcos González Hernando and Gerry Mitchell
Published 23 May 2023

These included cuts in the basic rate of income tax to 19p; a reversal in the rise in corporation tax and national insurance; abolishing the cap on bankers’ bonuses; and lowering the tax rate on incomes above £150,000.19 Markets unsurprisingly reacted, concerned at the potential for rising inflation, without a serious plan from the government to pay the debt back, so sterling was sent ‘spiralling down and gilts soaring, costing the Bank of England £65bn to prop up pension funds’.20 Two of these tax cuts (the top rate and corporation tax) were subsequently rolled back due to public and market pressure. However, even with the quick U-turn on two taxes, the richest 5% of households will still gain almost 40 times as much as the poorest fifth of households by the measures announced.21 Crucially, Rishi Sunak’s government is still planning public spending cuts and further austerity. With the need for additional borrowing and no fiscal plan in place, the government has undermined the Bank of England’s attempts to tackle inflation and led to interest rates spiking on government debt, volatility in sterling and market uncertainty.22 Described variously as ‘disastrous’, ‘a fiscal and moral outrage’, ‘a reckless mini-budget for the rich’ and ‘At last!

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Statista (2022) Number of people employed in the United Kingdom from July 1971 to July 2022 (in 1,000s). www.statista. com/statistics/281998/employment-figures-in-the-unitedkingdom-uk Stevenson, G. (2021) I made millions betting against trickle-down economics – now I’m tackling wealth inequality. Wellbeing Economy Alliance. https://weall.org/gary-stevenson 230 References Stewart, H. (2022) Rishi Sunak announces £5bn windfall tax on energy firms. The Guardian. 26 May. www.theguardian. com/politics/2022/may/26/sunak-announces-windfall-taxenergy-firms Stewart, M. (2018) The 9.9 percent is the new American aristocracy. The Atlantic. www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/06/ the-birth-of-a-new-american-aristocracy/559130 Stewart, M. (2021) The 9.9 percent: The new aristocracy that is entrenching inequality and warping our culture.

pages: 82 words: 24,150

The Corona Crash: How the Pandemic Will Change Capitalism
by Grace Blakeley
Published 14 Oct 2020

The financial system is, as always, supported with every state resource available, and corporations have been given access to a near-endless pool of liquidity. Meanwhile mortgage holders were quickly provided with a three-month break on their mortgage payments. Under pressure from the trade union movement, Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced a furlough scheme covering 80 per cent of employees’ wages, up to £2,500 per month, to encourage employers to keep staff on as the crisis worsened. In a tacit admission that the current welfare system barely provides claimants with enough to survive, Sunak injected it with an extra £7 billion, equivalent to an extra £20 per week for the unemployed.

pages: 326 words: 91,532

The Pay Off: How Changing the Way We Pay Changes Everything
by Gottfried Leibbrandt and Natasha de Teran
Published 14 Jul 2021

If Putin invades Gotland [Sweden’s largest island] it will be enough for him to turn off the payments system. No other country would even think about taking these sorts of risks, they would demand some sort of analogue system.’ Whether as a direct result of Kontantupproret’s efforts or real fears about imminent invasions, legislation to preserve cash has been put in place in Sweden.1 Rishi Sunak, UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, announced similar plans in March 2020.2 The Swedish measures have been pushed through for two key reasons: first, to ensure that everyone, including the digitally disadvantaged, is able to pay and be paid; second, to ensure that payments can still be made if there were to be a major disruption to the system.

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. ______________________________________________________________________ 1 In January 2020, the Obligation for Certain Credit Institutions to Provide Cash Services law came into effect in Sweden. It requires certain local credit institutions and branches of foreign credit institutions to provide cash services to consumers and firms. 2 Delivering his first budget in March 2020, Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced that the UK government was to bring forward legislation to protect access to cash and ensure that the UK’s cash infrastructure was sustainable in the long term. Budget 2020, Section 1.53. 3 An eWallet is an electronic version of the physical one. It can contain your bank cards and hold cash balances.

pages: 134 words: 41,085

The Wake-Up Call: Why the Pandemic Has Exposed the Weakness of the West, and How to Fix It
by John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge
Published 1 Sep 2020

Uncle Sam is already on the line for over $3 trillion in stimulus, deferrals, and guarantees.12 By the end of May around forty-five million jobs were being supported by governments in the euro area alone. When British shops reopened, a cartoon in the Daily Telegraph showed a consumer, loaded down with goods, announcing, “Just charge it to Rishi Sunak,” Britain’s finance minister. The left wants more. Corbynistas and Sandersistas are having a merry time attaching all their favorite policies onto Covid-19 like so many baubles on a Christmas tree—radical redistribution here, universal basic income there. “The Corona crisis is not without its advantages,” says Ulrike Herrmann, a German anticapitalist.

pages: 463 words: 140,499

The Tyranny of Nostalgia: Half a Century of British Economic Decline
by Russell Jones
Published 15 Jan 2023

Cummings’s interventions extended to suggestions that there should be a purge of senior officials and to renewed calls to develop another economics ministry as a counterbalance to a Treasury that supposedly remained staffed by orthodox thinkers and Remainers. Javid resigned when he was informed that his special advisors would be managed from Number 10. He was replaced by his chief secretary: the Goldman Sachs alumnus Rishi Sunak. Javid never delivered a budget. The November 2019 event was cancelled because of the general election campaign. However, he did successfully steer through the installation of Andrew Bailey as Mark Carney’s successor as Bank of England governor, despite the efforts of the prime minister’s office to appoint a more politically malleable alternative.

…

Phillip Hammond’s attitude to the matter at first largely mirrored George Osborne’s cautious, cost-conscious example, even though it was clearer than ever by 2016 that failing to act to control the rise in average global temperatures would generate extraordinary levels of disruption. It was only from the end of Hammond’s term as chancellor, and with the arrival of Rishi Sunak in Number 11 Downing Street, that the substance of climate change policy altered significantly. The shift seems to have reflected Boris Johnson’s belated conversion from climate emergency denial, the fact that the COP26 climate change conference would be held in Glasgow in November 2021, and an effort to apply an element of substance to the government’s post-Brexit slogan of ‘Global Britain’.

pages: 271 words: 79,355

The Dark Cloud: How the Digital World Is Costing the Earth
by Guillaume Pitron
Published 14 Jun 2023

With its digital silk road, China will now need to secure its cable infrastructure — an ideal target in the event of a conflict. The West, preoccupied with the security of its information highways, has already identified this challenge: ‘The risk posed to these … connections that carry everything from military intelligence to global financial data is real and growing’, Rishi Sunak, now UK prime minister, highlighted in a report during his time as a British member of parliament.45 The slightest attack, he continued, would be ‘potentially catastrophic’, with the ability to cause ‘significant economic disruption and damage military communications’.46 By Sunak’s account, Russia would not be averse to severing telecommunication cables, as it did when it invaded Crimea, to control the flow of information during a time of war.

pages: 302 words: 92,206

Nomad Century: How Climate Migration Will Reshape Our World
by Gaia Vince
Published 22 Aug 2022

‘Immigrants bolster patriotism and national trust in American government institutions,’ the researchers concluded.14 This is borne out in countless examples, including the Irish-born French immigrant Samuel Beckett, who was awarded the Croix de Guerre for his heroism in the French Resistance, many of the UK’s leaders – Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Chancellor Rishi Sunak, Home Secretary Priti Patel and London Mayor Sadiq Khan are all first- or second-generation immigrants – and social reformers such as Thomas Paine, the British-born American immigrant whose pamphlets helped inspire the patriots to declare American independence in 1776. Today, just one in seven of us is a migrant, and of these only 20 per cent crossed an international border.

pages: 493 words: 98,982

The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good?
by Michael J. Sandel
Published 9 Sep 2020

Goodman, “The Nordic Way to Economic Rescue,” The New York Times , March 28, 2020, nytimes.com/2020/03/28/business/nordic-way-economic-rescue-virus.html ; Richard Partington, “UK Government to Pay 80% of Wages for Those Not Working in Coronavirus Crisis,” The Guardian , March 20, 2020, theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/mar/20/government-pay-wages-jobs-coronavirus-rishi-sunak ; Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, “Jobs Aren’t Being Destroyed This Fast Elsewhere. Why Is That?,” The New York Times , March 30, 2020, nytimes.com/2020/03/30/opinion/coronavirus-economy-saez-zucman.html . 53. Oren Cass, The Once and Future Worker , pp. 79–99. 54. Ibid., pp. 115–39. 55. Ibid., pp. 25–28, 210–12. 56.

pages: 345 words: 100,989

The Pyramid of Lies: Lex Greensill and the Billion-Dollar Scandal
by Duncan Mavin
Published 20 Jul 2022

Other governments announced similar measures. Inside Greensill, senior managers knew that this shift, this opportunity was what Lex wanted them to focus on. He told staff, confidently, that the Bank of England and HM Treasury were ready to provide funding. IN THE UK that hectic and fear-filled spring, Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced the government’s Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS). The loans were intended to support small and medium-sized businesses that were struggling to make ends meet as the economic effects of the pandemic hit home. He then announced a similar plan for large businesses (CLBILS).

pages: 357 words: 107,984

Trillion Dollar Triage: How Jay Powell and the Fed Battled a President and a Pandemic---And Prevented Economic Disaster
by Nick Timiraos
Published 1 Mar 2022

Mnuchin, who had a deep understanding of short-term funding markets and the implications of any freeze, didn’t need to be convinced. Whatever you need, he told Powell. Central banks in other democracies were undertaking coordinated actions to shore up confidence. Bank of England Governor Mark Carney had appeared alongside Rishi Sunak, the UK chancellor, that Wednesday after both men unveiled a one-two punch of interest-rate cuts and stimulus spending. “There is no reason for this shock to turn into the experience of 2008—a virtual lost decade in a number of economies—if we handle this well,” said Carney, who was set to leave office at the end of the week.

pages: 430 words: 111,038

Empireland: How Imperialism Has Shaped Modern Britain
by Sathnam Sanghera
Published 28 Jan 2021

See Coll Thrush, Indigenous London: Native Travelers at the Heart of Empire, Yale University Press, 2016. 2 Two titles that explore this fascinating history: Ron Ramdin, Reimagining Britain: 500 Years of Black and Asian History, Pluto Press, 1999; Michael Fisher, Counterflows to Colonialism: Indian Travellers and Settlers in Britain, 1600–1857, Permanent Black, 2004. 3 Esther Addley, ‘A one-way passage from India: Hackney Museum explores fate of colonial ayahs’, Guardian, 1/03/2020, https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2020/mar/01/one-way-passage-from-india-hackney-museum-colonial-ayahs-london. 4 Robert Winder, Bloody Foreigners: The Story of Immigration to Britain, Abacus, 2013, p. 340. 5 Alice Phillipson, ‘White Britons a minority in Leicester, Luton and Slough’, Telegraph, 10/01/2013, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/9792392/White-Britons-a-minority-in-Leicester-Luton-and-Slough.html; Rishi Sunak and Saratha Rajeswaran, A Portrait of Modern Britain, Policy Exchange, 6/05/2014, https://policyexchange.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/a-portrait-of-modern-britain.pdf. 6 https://archive.bma.org.uk/news/2018/september/a-passage-from-india. 7 Habib Imtiaz, ‘Indians in Shakespeare’s England as “the first-fruits of India”: Colonial Effacement and Postcolonial Reinscription’, Journal of Narrative Theory 2006, 36:1, https://www.questia.com/library/journal/1P3-1163615621/indians-in-shakespeare-s-england-as-the-first-fruits. 8 Winder, Bloody Foreigners, pp. 131, 138, 145, 219. 9 Onyeka Nubia, ‘Who was the Ipswich Man?’

pages: 521 words: 110,286

Them and Us: How Immigrants and Locals Can Thrive Together
by Philippe Legrain
Published 14 Oct 2020

In the nineteenth century, German immigrants to the US were viewed as an alien threat by established settlers of English heritage; now a president who is the grandson of German immigrants poses as the defender of ‘real Americans’ like him. While some people still think that non-white Britons such as Chancellor Rishi Sunak and Mayor of London Sadiq Khan are not truly British, most Britons no longer equate Britishness with being white.15 The notion of a single unchanging national community is a myth. Diverse nations Nor have nations ever been as uniform as nationalists think, and they are becoming ever more diverse for many reasons other than immigration.

pages: 469 words: 137,880

Seven Crashes: The Economic Crises That Shaped Globalization
by Harold James
Published 15 Jan 2023

At the beginning, policy-makers made analogies with war and military mobilization. Xi Jinping on February 6, 2020, explained that China was engaged in a “people’s war.”37 On March 17, British prime minister Boris Johnson said, “We must act like any wartime government and do whatever it takes to support our economy”; and the chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak, claimed: “We have never faced an economic fight like this one.”38 On March 19, Donald Trump talked of “our big war,” identifying a foreign country as the enemy: “We continue our relentless effort to defeat the Chinese virus.”39 Trade adviser Peter Navarro, on March 28, said: “We are engaged in the most significant industrial mobilization since World War Two.