Thread by @RichardJMurphy

The costs of coronavirus continues to mount.

There’s the lost confidence in exams

And the consequent alienation from education

Which is bound to continue as parents refuse to send children back to school, soon

Then there’s the cost of supporting some now over-subscribed universities, that will become Covid hotspots soon

And the cost of supporting those universities who have lost out from grade inflation but who we will definitely need next year

After which there’s the cost of finding 250,000 people who are going to evicted from homes for coronavirus related rent defaults very soon, all of who, will be without deposits to find new ones

Whilst there will also be the cost of bailing out councils, now stretched beyond their limits

And if Matt Hancock’s new Micky-mouse health ‘Institute’ is going to evidence any sort of nous it’s going to demand that all the cuts he and Hunt imposed on Public Health England in recent years be restored

And that’s before we get to the cost of extending furlough to prevent the next debacle

I sincerely hope HM Treasury has embraced deficit funding in perpetuity by now because if not something’s going to break. My concern is that it will notice none of these things and try to ‘balance the books’ nonetheless. That’s when politics might get ugly