Best of the financial columnists

Rishi Sunak is fighting the last war

Philip Pilkington

Unherd

German policymakers, scarred and fixated by the hyperinflation of the 1920s, sharply reduced government spending in the early 1930s when economic turbulence hit, leading their country into a “punishing depression”, says Philip Pilkington. Like the Weimar Germans, chancellor Rishi Sunak is today “fighting the last war”. Ever since the 2008 financial crisis, higher government spending has been a key policy tool, which makes sense when unemployment is high and inflation is low.