The chancellor disappoints, but he’s a man with a tax plan

After flying so high in the two years since he was unexpectedly elevated to the job of chancellor dazzling everybody with the scale of his pandemic interventions his clarity of thought and the success of the furlough scheme there was always going to be a moment when Rishi Sunak came back down to earth. His Spring Statement an odd slot in the fiscal calendar which the Treasury would have preferred not to be required to do was that moment.

The Spring Statement required because under the law the government has to publish two official forecasts a year was intended to be just that an economic update accompanied by some commentary from the chancellor. When announcing the date at the end...