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Rishi Sunak’s performance last week was dazzling. But a week is a long time in the assessment of a Budget. Not all stay dazzled. Accolades one day after are risky. On the whole the public

agreed with the approval given by _TheArticle_ contributors. One opinion poll gave the Conservative Party a 13-point lead, a Budget boost on top of the vaccination bounce. Rishi Sunak speaks

well, reminiscent of Tony Blair in full flow: verb-less sentences to accentuate his achievements, repeated use of the well-known triple formula from classical rhetoric. Mr Google says it’s

called _epizeuxis_. Scrabble players please note. Our video-star Chancellor’s carefully crafted speech illustrated, if any further illustration were needed, that he intends to be his Party’s

choice as leader when Boris Johnson has ceased to be of use to the Conservative Party.  Those of sound mind and lesser aspirations do not delve into Budgets’ small print. The headlines

sounded balanced, the tone honest, the measures necessary and, in one instance, incentivising investment, cleverly innovative. On a heavy news day, competing with bloodletting in the SNP,

Sir Keir Starmer’s gainsaying got minimal coverage. But when we were allowed to hear from the Leader of the Opposition, he showed that the much admired balance of the Sunak speech was only

achieved within a very narrow vision of society and economic recovery. The great theme of Margaret Thatcher’s premiership, now hallowed as immutable tradition, was choice. As we are so often

told, political leadership means making difficult choices. But you begin to ask “difficult for whom” when the choices made by a particular Party, on close inspection, most often turn out to

the detriment of those on low incomes. Particularly after a decade of austerity and static wages with rising numbers of food-banks and shortage of decent housing. The answer to “difficult

for whom” should be obvious. When the difficult choices mean withholding a £20-a-week supplement to Universal Credit benefit, just as other pandemic benefits cease in September, when

government is offering nurses a one per cent  “pay increase”, knowing that next year’s inflation will make it a wage cut, or proposing savage cuts to aid for countries in desperate need —

starving Yemen among several examples — you get a clue to the Conservative Party’s vision of economic recovery. When, after a pandemic which has shone a spotlight on inequality, the public

are told anti-poverty policy is about getting people into work at a time when Brexit and lockdowns guarantee rising unemployment, you begin to get the picture. And when young people, writing

countless job applications, are left high and dry, a consistent pattern emerges. Let’s call it “a preferential option against the poor”. The kind of society found in no political party’s

manifesto is being stealthily created by the triumphant Tory Right. Their preferred option even defeats the purpose of measures designed to stop the economy imploding during the pandemic.

Why? Because for months an important reason for infection rates staying dangerously high, and requiring lockdowns, has been that people on low incomes simply cannot afford to quarantine.

Infected or not, workers in poorly paid jobs and in the gig economy live with permanent anxiety about making ends meet, and can feel they have no alternative but to go to work. Thanks to the

decline in trades union membership there are many unprotected people working under these conditions. Not that quarantine in cramped accommodation, housing three generations, is likely to be

very effective. And not to mention the disgraceful conditions imposed on some asylum seekers, Covid’s soft targets, off the Government’s keep-safe radar. Another option taken against the

most vulnerable. The trouble with the “we can’t afford it” defence is that it sounds like common sense. The retort should be “look at the hundreds of billions you _could_ afford? And weren’t

billions of it misspent?” Why is it common sense to declare expenditure unaffordable for public goods supporting the most vulnerable, when the Government can afford to squander £10 billion

of taxpayers’ money on one tranche of outsourcing, on the notorious centralised Track and Trace scheme? It failed. (Without acknowledging such waste bypassing existing local public health

networks, responsibility for vaccination services has — thank heavens — been placed in the hands of the NHS.) We are dealing with an ideological problem; the overall aim is to shrink the

state. Government will return to this once the pandemic is over.  Current strategy is to keep public scrutiny to a minimum, pursuing policy by stealth, conveniently forgetting, or treating

as invisible, for example, social care and the wages of care workers, including home care. Vital low-paid cleaners and hospital porters also put their lives on the line. Government’s

intention to shape or distract public perceptions is demonstrated by spending £2.5 million on a new Press room in Downing Street. This comes with a new White House-style Press Secretary who

brought us “Eat Out to Help Out” when she worked for the Chancellor. The BBC has begun timorously questioning “government priorities” — as if, once the North-East Conservative constituencies

have had their bungs, it might be time to consider the needs of the many who don’t live in, say, Richmond, Yorkshire, the Chancellor’s seat. But when priorities are, as they say,

“hard-baked” into ideology and self-interest, those priorities are not going to change — though the Government may be forced to do something for the nurses because of the public outcry.  The

British public now have a fundamental choice to make. The problem is much bigger than the wages of one profession. It is to decide what sort of society we wish our children to live in after

the pandemic. If the choice is business as usual, more of the option against the poor, we will get the country we deserve. Save us the shame. It is the responsibility of HM Opposition to

offer an alternative. A MESSAGE FROM THEARTICLE _We are the only publication that’s committed to covering every angle. We have an important contribution to make, one that’s needed now more

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