Rishi Sunak is the heir to Blair – his mini-Budget will bear the marks of New Labour’s legacy

In his spring statement tomorrow, the chancellor will defend a tax rise for the NHS while trying to help those on lower incomes with fuel bills, writes John Rentoul

Sunak’s emphasis on fairness and social justice is what ran through his rhetoric during the pandemic (PA)

If you close your eyes, Rishi Sunak even sounds like Tony Blair. The same unplaceable posh accent; hyper-articulate; utterly reasonable. The chancellor talks fast and yet with precision. He gave two TV interviews at the weekend to pave the way for his mini-Budget tomorrow – and for students of the next prime minister, they were worth watching.

If you watched one of them, you might have noticed the Blair parallel. If you watched both of them, you will have been struck by something else. The two interviews were nearly identical. Not only were the interviewers called Sophie R and Sophy R (Raworth for the BBC; Ridge for Sky News), but many of Sunak’s answers were word-for-word the same, yet completely natural in context. This is message discipline of an ultra-Blairite kind.

The ability to give the same answer several times is, of course, a mere mechanical skill, although most politicians struggle to master it; what makes Sunak even more Blair-like, though, is that he knows his stuff. If challenged on a perfectly formed paragraph of persuasive argument, the chancellor has total command of the steps in the thinking that got him there, and the facts on which it is based.