The Conservatives have been in power since May 2010. Their record has been dreadful. This is partly because of adverse circumstances. But it is also because the party is in thrall to an outmoded ideology. On balance, each leader has also been worse than his or her predecessor.
Maybe Rishi Sunak will be the “grown up” who breaks this sequence. But it is not grown up to promise tight controls on public spending, but only after the next election. It is not grown up to lower debt by slashing public investment. It is not grown up to raise taxes through stealth reductions in thresholds. Grown ups should not promise cuts in the distant future. They should focus on the overall balance sheet, not just liabilities and they should be honest.
After the damage done by the fiscal austerity loaded on the most vulnerable by George Osborne, the ill-considered Brexit referendum of David Cameron, the botched negotiations of Theresa May, the lies of Boris Johnson and the folly of Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng, Sunak must offer something vastly better. The lengthy period of negligible productivity growth and stagnant real disposable incomes makes this even more urgent. It does not begin to be good enough for Sunak to impose another round of cheeseparing austerity, especially since that would tend to hurt the more vulnerable at a time of soaring prices.