Britain has a new chancellor – get ready for a major spending splurge

The departure of Sajid Javid as chancellor and the appointment of Rishi Sunak marks a change in the style of our politics. John Stepek explains what's going on, and what it means for UK assets and for your money.

Rishi Sunak: a new style of politics
(Image credit: 2020 Getty Images)

Poor old Sajid Javid. Last year, the then-chancellor was warming up to give his first budget speech. But a pesky general election got in the way. Never mind. The Conservatives won, and so it looked as if he’d be having his big moment on 11 March.

But yesterday, Javid resigned. We now have a new chancellor – Rishi Sunak, who was Javid’s deputy – and we’ll never get to hear what might have been in Javid’s Budget. So what’s going on?

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John Stepek

John Stepek is a senior reporter at Bloomberg News and a former editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He graduated from Strathclyde University with a degree in psychology in 1996 and has always been fascinated by the gap between the way the market works in theory and the way it works in practice, and by how our deep-rooted instincts work against our best interests as investors.

He started out in journalism by writing articles about the specific business challenges facing family firms. In 2003, he took a job on the finance desk of Teletext, where he spent two years covering the markets and breaking financial news.

His work has been published in Families in Business, Shares magazine, Spear's Magazine, The Sunday Times, and The Spectator among others. He has also appeared as an expert commentator on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, BBC Radio Scotland, Newsnight, Daily Politics and Bloomberg. His first book, on contrarian investing, The Sceptical Investor, was released in March 2019. You can follow John on Twitter at @john_stepek.