Rishi Sunak should focus on those decisions that really make a difference

Ministerial life makes you feel like a decision maker. It’s you, the minister, who writes the laws and doles  out the cash, putting your initials at the top of submissions every night while the rest of the nation settles down to watch TV.  

But anyone who has held government office with an ounce of self-reflection will have asked themselves: am I making any difference? Much of the time the answer is “no”. When junior ministers joined the Treasury I would give them this advice: “Remember that at least 80 per cent of the decisions you make, any person doing your job would make. Ninety per cent of the decisions you make, any Conservative would make. The key is the other 10 per cent. That’s where you make the difference.”  

This is not a defence of inertia. Getting the chance to shape one tenth of the work of, say, the Department of Education or the Home Office, gives you enormous power over the lives of your fellow citizens. Most politicians I observed had far less impact than that; the weather-makers were the exception.  

Bear that in mind as we approach this Wednesday’s announcement of the Chancellor’s spending review. How much of a free hand does the undoubtedly impressive Rishi Sunak actually have? First, let’s treat with a pinch of salt the talk among all western governments — not just our own — that there’s no return to austerity.  

They may not use the word but the fact is we’ve had a huge economic shock, our country is poorer, and while we’ve borrowed to get through this pandemic, the time is coming when we have to spend less and tax more. That is what Denis Healey found in the Seventies, Ken Clarke knew in the Nineties, and Alistair Darling and I saw a decade ago. It’s what the Treasury is telling Sunak now. Given no British government has been willing — or able to persuade the public — to take the tax burden higher than 40 per cent of national income, much of the strain is always borne by spending.  

Back in March when I foretold this, I was told then that this time it would be different. The expected announcement nine months later of a public sector pay freeze feels more like deja vu. The question is whether the Chancellor fights the decisions he will inevitably have to make and has only the illusion of control, or embraces events and sets their course. My guess is that Rishi wants to make a difference.

Second, let’s also not get too excited about most of the individual announcements. Yes, Rishi will be the first Chancellor to announce a British government budget of more than a trillion pounds. But most of that is already set in stone.  I always smile when I hear we’re going to have a zero-based spending review, where every pound is going to be examined afresh. They soon resemble a Monty Python sketch: “Where’s this trillion pounds going,” the Chancellor asks. “Well, we’ve got to pay the pensions.” “Oh, yes.” “And fund the NHS.” “Yes…” “And then there’s the schools, army and police.” “We can’t get rid of those. I know, we’ll freeze some departmental budgets and scrap the Office for Tackling Burning Injustices."  

In a country as established as ours, what you end up with is a set of decisions at the margins. Is public spending going up by one or two per cent in real terms, or down?  

It comes back to that 10 per cent of decisions that are really yours. Over a number of years you can make substantial changes to the overall shape of the British state. You can reform public services, devolve budgets, commission major infrastructure. But it takes time and perseverance and a plan — and they are always in short supply in politics.  

I’ve heard about some good things this government wants to do — modernising defence for the cyber and space age, for example; more often we hear about the things they don’t want to do. They don’t want to sustain the hard-won aid commitment to the world’s poorest. They don’t want to build the eastern  leg of HS2 that has been 10 years in development. That seems strange  for a Conservative government that talks of global Britain and levelling up the North.