Announcement = furlough scheme is extended until end of March at 80% of previous wages. This basically completes the slow u-turn over the last few months
So he's decided it's too complex to try and make furlough tied to specific restrictions and gone for the "keep it everywhere right through the winter" option
Self-employment grants also increased to 80% of previous earnings for three months to January (doubling them from the planned 40% a week ago and the announced 55% a few days back). This scheme is far too generous to some, while excluding hundreds of thousands badly needing help
Chancellor rightly scraps the poorly targeted and very expensive Job Retention Bonus.
Big picture: economic policy is now set back on full on lockdown mode.
The existence of devolution on public health policy is a BIG driver of why we've ended up here. Govt can't coordinate economic/public health measures and obviously decided trying to do so via rules was too complex.
How have we ended up with this messy, slow and steady u-turn over the past two months? Optimism bias + lack of contingency planning theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
Detail of today's announcements: gov.uk/government/new…
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