Boris’s New Deal can build an exciting future

AFTER the credit crunch of 2008, most reasonable people in the country accepted the need for belt-tightening. But that was then.

Now, faced with a unique downturn caused by the pandemic, Boris Johnson today pledges to do the opposite – to build and spend our way out of this depression.

The PM is announcing a £5billion “new deal” to kick start our recovery. With schools, hospitals, roads and town centres in his sights the Prime Minister is set on an infrastructure revolution – we should “build, build, build”.

This certainly throws down a gauntlet to George Osborne’s “austerity” politics of 2010 onwards. But Mr Johnson is keenly aware of history, most notably of President Franklin D Roosevelt’s New Deal in the 1930s, which financed public works to haul America out of the Great Depression.

He understands that a stimulus will reinvigorate the economy, and that investment now will return later – all helped by the headwind of low-interest finance.

That the Government’s stimulus will benefit previously under-invested regions in the Midlands and North is also a powerful argument in its favour.

Unemployment could well top three million, many from the eight million people who sit furloughed. But the Government is determined to use this setback as an opportunity to reset the economy, connect the country and create opportunities for all working people. It must be supported.