The economic signs suggest the prime minister has no good options
For someone who values fiscal prudence, Rishi Sunak bears a strong resemblance to Charles Dickens’s Wilkins Micawber. During his tenure as chancellor of the exchequer public debt ballooned, from 84.5% of GDP to 96%. As prime minister, Mr Sunak’s political strategy seems to be almost pure Micawberism—a hope that something will turn up. Whatever turns up insofar as the economy is concerned is unlikely to be good for the Tories.
And because changes in interest rates take time to have an effect, the bulk of the pain from that tightening, the fastest in several decades, is yet to be felt by households. Swati Dhingra, a member of the rate-setting monetary policy committee, argued in October that only 20-25% of the tightening since December 2021, when interest rates were just 0.1%, has been absorbed so far. According to UK Finance, a trade body, 1.6m fixed-rate mortgages in Britain are due to expire in 2024.
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