Rishi Sunak’s mini-budget statement was the easy part. The real challenge is in making sure it measures up come autumn

Rishi Sunak lived up to his billing as the Conservatives’ coming man, and their likely next leader, with a clever summer economic statement. He passed a crucial test by saving up a few surprises, on top of pre-announced measures on jobs for young people and green energy-saving.

The chancellor under-promised and over-delivered, in marked contrast with Boris Johnson’s rash pledge to create a “world-beating” test and trace system – still woefully lacking. Sunak had enough new, headline-grabbing announcements. A £4bn temporary cut in VAT for hospitality and tourism from 20 per cent to 5 per cent, a much lower rate than predicted. Crowd-pleasing “eat out to help out” vouchers to give people up to £10 off their bill when having meals out from Mondays to Wednesdays.

Another rabbit pulled out of his hat was a £1,000 bonus for employers to take back workers who have been furloughed. The take-up remains unclear, and many businesses will probably not want to keep such workers until January. But it was clever politics and will draw some of the sting from his refusal to extend his furlough scheme beyond October.

Sunak’s other measure was a temporary cut in stamp duty to boost the housing market, by raising the threshold to £500,000. Although the Treasury will want to get it hands on the revenue again, some Tory MPs hope the change might become permanent. “Stamp duty is the most hated tax,” one ally of Sunak told me. Onward, a centre-right think tank, published a plan last year to raise the threshold to £500,000 permanently, with the £3.3bn cost met by measures such as higher tax on second and empty homes and a higher council tax band on the most expensive properties. Perhaps Sunak will be tempted down this route.

For now, his popular measures will divert attention from the unemployment crisis still coming fast down the track. The chancellor clearly hopes his “plan for jobs” costing up to £30bn will prevent a return to the three million jobless seen in the 1980s. But there is no guarantee it will.

Significantly, Sunak put clear blue water between this government and the Thatcher era. “I will never accept unemployment as an unavoidable outcome,” he said, adding that for him, it was not just a question of economics, but values. This was a reminder that, despite Sunak’s own fiscal conservatism, events have turned him into a very different political animal. A Tory government is intervening in the economy on a scale the party would have condemned if it had been done by a Labour one.

Indeed, Labour’s standard response during the coronavirus crisis is to say the Tories are doing something it has long called for. The opposition can claim Sunak’s kickstart scheme for the young jobless copied the Labour government’s future jobs fund after the financial crisis. Labour did win the battle of the language around this statement. When Johnson relaunched his government with his “build, build, build” speech last week, Labour said the real priority should be “jobs, jobs, jobs”. Johnson corrected himself the day after his speech, saying: “We are going to build, build, build and deliver jobs, jobs, jobs for the people of this country.” Labour’s problem is that it is doubtful whether most voters will notice.

Sunak’s approach worries some right-wing Tories, who fear that if their party becomes Labour-lite, voters might choose the real thing. They wanted to see a stronger commitment than Sunak made today to bring down debt by the end of the five-year parliament. The Tory traditionalists fear that if interest rates returned to normal levels, it would cost £100bn a year just to service the debt.

While the chancellor acknowledged that the public finances would have to be put back on a “sustainable footing” in the medium term, he offered no clues about how he would do it. This is bound to involve some tax increases and ending the triple lock on the state pension. He didn’t want headlines about such harsh medicine now.

Indeed, the Treasury’s black hole has got even bigger. Although Sunak did not mention it, Treasury documents published alongside his speech showed it is allocating another £31.9bn to public services – including £15bn for personal protective equipment and £10bn for the track and trace scheme.

The statement will enhance Sunak’s reputation and future leadership prospects. But it was still the easy part. The real test for the Tories’ rising star will come in his Budget and government-wide spending review in the autumn. He will not be in good news mode then. The picture on the economy and jobs will be much clearer. It might well be bleak, and we might look back on today’s measures as not measuring up to the scale of the challenge.

Although the chancellor can pull the levers, he knows things are not under his control. The state of the economy will depend on whether customers feel confident enough to return to restaurants, pubs and cafes in the way he hopes. And he knows his best-laid plans and clever schemes could be wrecked by the cloud of a second coronavirus wave hanging over all of us.