Rishi Sunak’s public spending dilemma is that soon he will have to say ‘no’

John Rentoul asks whether the British people are really willing to pay higher taxes for better services

Rishi Sunak’s task is harder than any chancellor’s since the 1970s (PA Wire)

I hope I’m not breaking the rules of the leader-writers’ club when I say that in many years of writing unsigned editorials for The Independent, I have often resorted to the formula: “Of course, these solutions will require additional public spending, but that is a small price to pay for motherhood and apple pie; and besides, the costs of doing nothing are even greater.”

Demands for higher public spending are always infinite, but the political pressure behind them now is stronger than I can remember. As Rishi Sunak surveys the red spreadsheet cells arrayed in front of him, he must know that the Treasury’s task in controlling spending is harder than it has been at any time since the 1970s. No wonder he is reported to be thinking of postponing the autumn Budget to next year. (The Treasury’s long struggle to move the spring Budget to the autumn, so that it can align spending decisions with tax ones, is one of the telling subplots of the spending-control drama.)

Right now there is an apparently irresistible case for more public spending on the NHS, social care, keeping the £20-a-week universal credit uplift, transition to net zero carbon, schools catch-up and social housing. That is just to list the most important headings, all of which The Independent supports.