Budget 2020: Rishi Sunak turns on taps with £30bn splurge

Chancellor announces £12bn to fight coronavirus and £18bn on ‘levelling up’ in reversal of Tory orthodoxy

Rishi Sunak ditched a decade of Conservative economic orthodoxy on Wednesday and claimed the Tories were now “the party of public services,” as he turned on the spending taps with a £30bn package that leaves Britain on course to have a bigger state than under Tony Blair’s Labour governments.

On a day when the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 to be a global pandemic, the chancellor announced £12bn to buttress the economy against the immediate threat of recession and a further £18bn to deliver on Boris Johnson’s election pledge to “level up” the UK.

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