Rishi Sunak has given Boris Johnson a masterclass in messaging

Instead of saying he would extend the scheme for a month and then cut government support for it, he gave the impression that people would carry on being paid at current levels, writes John Rentoul

The chancellor springs a surpise in the House of Commons (Reuters)

As the chancellor rose to speak in the House of Commons, his team posted a graphic on his personal Twitter account that said, “Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme Extended,” with the catchline, “We Stand Together” in vivid contrasting colour, and his own signature underneath, over the title, “Chancellor.”

One person who will recognise that as a leadership bid will be Boris Johnson, who is not only recovering from Covid-19 but from the mauling his “mixed messages” have received over the past two days.

What a contrast. The prime minister has been criticised – including by the members of the public drafted in to give him a break from negative, nit-picking, oppositional journalists at his news conference on Monday – for vague and contradictory communications.

Politicians know they are in trouble when comedians get in on the act, so it was bad news for Johnson when Matt Lucas summed up his message as: “Don’t go to work; go to work.”

Sunak, on the other hand, would have been carried shoulder high from parliament back to the Treasury if social distancing rules had allowed it. Frances O’Grady, the leader of the Trades Union Congress, would have lifted him up from one side, and assorted Labour MPs from the other.

The chancellor came to the House of Commons with a show of reluctance. Anneliese Dodds, his shadow counterpart, had put down an urgent question asking about the future of the furlough scheme. The first we knew about it was when the prime minister, under siege in the house on Monday, said he didn’t want to pre-empt what the chancellor would be saying “tomorrow”.

So, unlike Johnson’s own address to the nation on Sunday – which received such advance billing that its audience exceeded that for the 2012 Olympic Games opening ceremony – Sunak’s big announcement came as a surprise. When it turned out that the prime minister had little new to say, the murmurs of national exasperation could be heard in Downing Street.

Sunak did not have much to say either, but what a lesson in how to say it. First, he said the furlough scheme would be extended by four months to the end of October. This time, the sighs of national relief could be heard in Downing Street. So loud were they that nobody heard the rest of the chancellor’s short answer to Dodds’s question, except that he said all workers would continue to receive 80 per cent of their current salaries.

It took several hours for the borrowed penny to drop. What the chancellor had actually announced was that the current furlough scheme would be extended by one month to the end of July. This is a relief to employers, who have to give 45 days’ notice of redundancies, but, after July, Sunak will “ask employers to start sharing with the government” the costs of the scheme.

So, although he said workers would continue to receive 80 per cent of their pre-Covid pay, that will no longer all come out of the public purse. He did not say how much government support would be cut to – 60 per cent has been mooted – and promised only to provide full details by the end of this month.

Many employers will not want to keep staff on their books if the government support is cut, but Sunak hopes that they, rather than the government, will get the blame if they lay people off.

It was a masterclass in messaging. Instead of saying he would extend the scheme for a month and then cut government support for it, he gave the impression that people would carry on being paid at current levels until the end of October – and that this was all backed by his new friends at the TUC.

What a truly astonishing trade politics is. In February, Sunak was the equivalent of the guy who does the office photocopying finding himself suddenly at the head of the most powerful government department. In what was thought to be a hostile takeover, turning the Treasury into a wholly owned subsidiary of No 10, he was portrayed as the creature not so much of Johnson but of Dominic Cummings.

Three months later, the prime minister can feel the shifting of the wind of public opinion against him, and he is being schooled by his protege in the arts of communication.