A mini budget full of lies from Rishi Sunak, the people’s millionaire

theguardian.com:

At least the speech was short and sweet, coming in at little more than 25 minutes. Rishi Sunak, well, he was not so sweet. The chancellor likes to portray himself as a man of the people. Someone who gets the everyday struggles. A man who feels our pain. A tough call for a millionaire married to a billionaire. Then I guess he would argue that poverty is relative. And compared to his wife, he’s broke. Sunak also prides himself on being someone who levels with the country. A man who can be trusted to be straight, even when delivering bad news.

Neither version of himself survives the slightest contact with reality. Rather he is the worst of both worlds. A chancellor with a veneer of empathy. Who can deliver a spring statement – aka a seismic budget in any other year – that offers nothing to the poorest and most vulnerable members of society while sobbing on their behalf. Who told the chamber with a straight face that he is committed to cutting taxes even when the Office of Budget Responsibility is saying that the tax burden is set to go up to 36.3% by 2026: the highest level since the 1940s.

Sunak had begun with the war in Ukraine. Something Boris Johnson found unaccountably funny. As the chancellor talked of men, women and children huddling in bombed out basements, the prime minister laughed uncontrollably. Let’s be kind. He probably wasn’t paying attention and was in his own private world. He finds it difficult to concentrate at the best of times and especially so when he’s not the centre of attention.

The longer he went on, the more it became clear that Ukraine was going to take a lot of the blame for the biggest fall in living standards since records began. No matter that prices were rising, inflation was at 6% and rising