Bosses should limit their pay to Boris Johnson’s £150,000 salary to galvanise UK’s recovery: Bernard Ingham

There are two reasons: the old Tory Wets dancing with joy because they have at last a spending Tory government and Margaret Thatcher and her departed Dries writhing in despair.

Chancellor Rishi Sunak is no fool. He knows that managing his party is like riding a tiger. Let’s hope then that his statement today injects a note of caution about continuing government largesse when the furlough scheme ends in October.

Unfortunately, his Prime Minister is pretty cavalier about money, even if his “New Deal” approach was not all it was cracked up to be. Mercifully, much of his £5bn expansionary package was already on the table. It is nonetheless £5bn we don’t have.

The reality is that as the coronavirus pandemic fades the Government is entering upon a new – or, in truth, the old – balancing act: how to reconcile sound finance with social responsibility.

While it tries to find a reliable antidote to coronavirus – with the possibility of more spikes to come – it is embarking on a momentous task.

After losing roughly a third of a year’s economic activity, it is seeking to revive the bread machine and at the same time remedy all our social failings – education, health, old people’s welfare and law and order.

For good measure, it is seeking to Brexit in good order while Nicola Sturgeon does her best to shove spanners in the UK works in her mad quest for Scottish independence.

Moreover, Boris has invited trouble from the Opposition by ruling out a return to the “austerity” of the last 10 years. They will be looking for it 
under every bed even though words will have lost all meaning if, after the 2008 crash, the last decade was austere.

If, after all this, our PM is still standing in 2025 and secures only a modicum of success, he will qualify for the nation’s honours list. It will be an Olympian achievement.

After all, he starts with a spiralling budget deficit and a surging national debt. His Government could borrow vastly more this year – more than double – the economy-sapping deficit left by Gordon Brown in 2010.

At the same time our national debt surges ever upwards beyond £2 trillion (a mind-boggling £2,000 billion). To service that debt costs more than our annual defence budget.

In attempting this gargantuan task, the Government will get precious little understanding even if it is as plain as a pikestaff that a deeply indebted nation is a weak one. All sorts of organisations are still holding their hands out for more public money as if it really does grow on trees.

In short, the true test of the nation is upon us. Are we going to work our socks off for the overall good, which is what is required, or are we going to 
pass the buck to Westminster and Whitehall?

Will the spirit of communal responsibility displayed during the pandemic carry over into the future?

Nowhere is this question more relevant than in industry and commerce. Are our well-heeled bosses resolved to show us they don’t just work for money and perks but for the satisfaction of piloting their firms and their employees back to prosperity?

Just imagine the galvanising effect on the nation if every boss vowed to take home no more than the PM’s £150,000 a year until success was achieved.

I ask all these questions because a threat far worse than bankruptcy is there for all to see.

The capitalist West – the USA, Europe, Japan, the UK and parts of the Commonwealth – is manifestly enfeebled by the pandemic.

The USA’s national debt exceeds an alarming $24 trillion. Meanwhile, the dictators of this world – Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Kim Jong-un and the Ayatollahs – rub their hands in glee.

It is no coincidence that China has now cracked down on Hong Kong in defiance of a treaty or that Putin has rammed through constitutional changes effectively giving him leadership in perpetuity.

They think Communism’s time has come. The world is at a very dangerous juncture. Our democratic freedoms are ultimately at stake – and, regrettably, are being undermined by militant fifth columns in the West.

This is not conspiracy theory. It is stone cold sober reality.

My first great grandchild, born on VE Day, will probably still be paying the coronavirus bill 50 years from now.

But let us above all protect her generation’s freedoms by getting willingly and selflessly to work to provide the wherewithal to defend them.

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