One of the many regrettable features of the government’s conduct of its economic policy is that there seems to be some dissonance both between and within No 10 and the Treasury.
As the experience of previous administrations bears out, if such differences are not resolved in a politically and economically coherent way, then trouble usually lies ahead. The enhanced economic clout drafted into the prime minister’s office at the last reshuffle – when Darren Jones, the chief secretary to the Treasury, was moved to a new senior role in Downing Street – was supposed to give clearer focus to the economic “narrative”, but there is thus far little evidence of that, and it may have merely complicated matters.
