Analysis Breaking

Sunak extends 80% furlough to end March – so why did he cost tens of thousands of jobs by delaying the inevitable?

Chancellor Rishi Sunak preparing for his Commons announcement?

Tory Chancellor Rishi Sunak has just announced that he will extend the 80% furlough scheme, along with the associated support for the self-employed, to the end of March next year. It’s about time, but when it was always inevitable that anti-coronavirus measures were going to continue to cost jobs and livelihoods, why has he delayed so long?

Jobs have been lost because of the winding down of the original furlough scheme – which Sunak only created in the first place because pressure from unions forced him to abandon his original plan to inject cash directly into corporate bank accounts with no conditions on protecting workers – and many small businesses have given up the ghost and shut down because there seemed to be no light at the end of the tunnel. Those businesses and jobs will not come back and those made unemployed will qualify only for the pittance of Universal Credit.

His boss Boris Johnson’s constant slowness to act has cost tens of thousands of lives. Sunak’s constant delays in doing what anyone could have told him was inevitable have cost many thousands of livelihoods, helping to plunge the UK into one of the worst coronavirus-driven economic crises in the developed world.

Sunak’s media allies will no doubt milk every drop of fake credit from this latest measure – but being far too slow to do what was always obvious is inexcusable and the extension is a tacit and again far too late admission of the Tories’ guilt in their atrocious response to the pandemic.

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16 comments

  1. These Torys are clueless about almost every subject .The party of “Fiscal responsibilities” .Absolutely tosh and apart from helping the 1percent they are the most right wing destroyers I have seen in my long life.time going back seventy years.

      1. It seems that you don’t understand macro economics. Government funding with a fiat currency isn’t the same as a household with a credit card – a complete myth perpetuated by the tories!

      2. I’m well aware of that thank you. I’m also aware that all government’s elected in this country have done their best to achieve a ‘balanced budget’ even down to making it law in the EU and voluntary in this country and that the working class has had to shoulder the burden of repayment for the last decade and will be expected to pay for the next 50 years.

  2. Because he, as all of us on Skwawkbox.org know, Tories are ONLY obsessed by making more money for the 1%. They lack all other vision.
    Have been meaning to say from the very start of furlough, that it should have been adjusted to earnings like a regressive tax. EG: up to 19k per annum 100%. Then to £25k 90%. Then to £35k 85%. To £45k 80%. £50k 75% etc … to £120k 40% etc MAX take home should be with furlough £48k
    These r just rough calculations as i’m rushing and multitasking as usual. Another approach is the system as is but with long overdue proper PROGRESSIVE taxation. Those up to approx £17k should be untaxed.

    PS: if you were a VERY wealthy person and happily married to another VERY wealthy person… the child of one of the world’s richest BILLIONAIRES, would you agree with your partner furloughing their staff at taxpayers expense⁉️⁉️⁉️ No. Me neither.

    ANYWAY, only meant to say these Tory operations were expected even by Tory Iraq Blair, Starmer & other Thatcherite spawn who all “worked night and day” to hand our victory to BloJob & Cummings. They preferred their Tory utter cruel mess rather that at last a TRUE Labour government with DECENT proper values that protect and build up the many
    🌹🌹🌹

  3. ps companies and people who furlough staff at taxpayers’ expense should be TAXED. It is wrong that billionaires who never paid any proper taxes in the first place and drip on and on about how great they are should be unnecessarily subsidised by the many. The likes of Phillip Green and Mrs Sunak should use their OWN assets to support their staff, if they had any decency.

    1. I agree there should also be a tax on the likes of Amazon who pay very little anyway, but are taking it in during lockdown at the expense of small businesses. When you consider that Amazon is only a leeching, but very good at it, middleman, we should be squeezing them.

  4. I imagine there was quite a financial saving in shifting the furloughed onto UC – seems like the obvious explanation to me – or am I missing something?
    Backpedalling would be the last thing the Tories would want to do after all their other recent humiliations surely?

    Heard a part of a piece on BBC News about a massive cull of about 17 million mink in a farm in Denmark.
    I thought human/animal transmission and mutation might become an issue – I think I might even have mentioned it here the last time a mink farm was implicated in an outbreak.
    Must be a worry for people with pets – I don’t even like humans enough to share my space with them.

    1. “I imagine there was quite a financial saving in shifting the furloughed onto UC – seems like the obvious explanation to me – or am I missing something?”
      Yes david, i was immediately suspicious re the way furlough was set up. I am no longer suspicious, but CONVINCED that it is a merchant bank “inspired” scam to continue lining the pickets of the 1% by it appears well disguised stealth, to judge by your views above. U r neither stupid nor bad. The very opposite. It is because most of the many cannot imagine committing such daylight robbery, we cannot imagine others would either. We need to step back. Take a break and reflect in quietude.

      If papers are not being shredded and others “sealed for 75” years after an “inquiry” truth will out ish. Even then, attentions of the many will move on OR be understandably moved on by events. That’s partly how the 1% “get away with it”.

      Thinking of it. What good reason, in ANY circumstances should the state subsidise 80% of a salaries of the top 1%⁉️⁉️⁉️

      They have more than enough assets to be socially conscious in ALL circumstances, ESPECIALLY gross ones like these. A precious handful have refused the state furlough. EVERY PRAISE to them.

      On the other hand, usual Tory Party voting & funding spivs and associates have done the opposite. Those are even using a pandemic to BLEED the MANY D R Y ‼️‼️‼️

      ps U r right about the animal transmission though. Too much encroachment by humans in eg Amazon forest. Pathogens and viruses then spread with a now MARKEDLY ultra mobile world population… mote akin to a very busy household …. well passed the interactions of a global village.

  5. Because he want to cost 1000’s of job, so that his pals can have a pick and choose of a large numbers of unemployed workers competing for the same jobs they have lost but with by far lower salaries?

    1. Exactly. And as we will come out of this very slowly, people will, by and large, be on less than full employment so while claiming UC, many will be doing a number of short term, part time shitty jobs.

  6. I heard the announcement hours ago but I’ve only just seen the footage on the BBC of Sunak on his feet,
    Did nobody else here see the face on Johnson sitting to his right (camera left) as Sunak spoke?
    Never seen that expression on him before.
    Looked like he was ready to explode – as if the announcement came as a complete surprise to him – Seemed to me a furious, thunderous scowl.
    Think the BBC just said BloJob will be speaking to the BBC in minutes.

    1. Just watched the Sunak speech again on YouTube and BloJob doesn’t look half so angry as it seemed to me. Conceivably could have been recut and edited for posterity but I doubt it was – probably my mistake.

  7. Labour’s Ed Miliband and Anneliese Dodds have challenged the UK government to ‘Build it in Britain’ and support the creation of 400,000 new jobs as part of a green economic recovery from the ongoing coronavirus crisis.
    Calling for a “bold and ambitious plan” as the country faces both a Covid jobs emergency and a climate emergency, the opposition party is demanding a recovery that will deliver high-skilled jobs in every area of the UK.
    https://labourlist.org/2020/11/labour-challenges-government-to-create-400000-new-jobs-in-green-recovery/

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