The chancellor’s latest scheme doesn’t go far enough. But if he’s decisive now, he could save thousands of jobs
With the health of the economy, as with our own, by the time you start feeling the pain, it is often already too late. Yesterday Rishi Sunak finally acted on the pangs induced by the flaws of his second wave of job support programmes. But had he offered bold support much earlier, many more jobs would have been saved and the prospects for the economy would be much improved. The patchwork solution that we’re now left with will alleviate much suffering, but it is still leaving many behind.
Sadly, the problems with the post-furlough job support schemes were foreseeable, but weren’t addressed in time. At the beginning of the pandemic, Sunak was praised for his bold and popular furlough scheme. But his jobs support plan for winter was decisively more cautious.
