There’s a scene in Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia when the clever, media-hungry English don, Bernard, thinks he has got one over on his rival by discovering something new about Lord Byron. He plans to publish his findings in a suitably august academic journal, where he promises the write-up will be “absolutely gloat-free”.
Rishi Sunak’s response to the barrage of good news that has been emerging about the UK economy in the past few weeks has also been gloat-free. The chancellor of the exchequer has expressed modest pleasure at official figures showing a pick-up in activity and a fall in the jobless rate, but he certainly hasn’t been banging the drum for boom-boom Britain.
That’s a wise strategy. Previous occupants of 11 Downing Street have boasted about the economy reaching a new plateau of achievement (copyright Nigel Lawson) or ending Tory boom and bust (copyright Gordon Brown), only to find that nemesis comes hard on the heels of hubris.
Sunak is as cautious privately as he is publicly. The Treasury’s response to figures showing the economy bouncing back strongly from the…
