What do the state of public finances mean for Rishi Sunak’s leadership bid?

The deficit is still massive but the numbers are moving in the right direction, giving the chancellor a little headroom to dish out that extra billion or two, writes Hamish McRae

Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak spoke to businesses and industry leaders last week (PA Wire)

“A billion here, a billion there…” said the US senator Everett Dirksen, and the UK chancellor, Rishi Sunak, seems to have taken this message on board. The second part of the quote, which may or may not have been said by the senator, is “and pretty soon you’re talking real money”. But are we?

The support for the battered hospitality and leisure businesses struck by the new variant is a financial story, an economic story, and a political story.

Finance is the easy bit. There will be more than a billion needed, but to put that into perspective, the government deficit is running at around £3bn a week. So a billion is not big in the totality of the country’s financial accounts. We got the monthly update on public finances yesterday, which showed that the deficit continues to fall sharply.