News Round Up: The ASI's response to the 2020 Budget

The Adam Smith Institute’s response to Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s first budget has featured in numerous publications, on television and radio. Some highlights include:  

City AM: The Adam Smith Institute called it “seriously concerning” and accused Sunak of being in danger of ripping up fiscal rules.

The think tank added: Spending like a drunken sailor will not create a thriving entrepreneurial economy. Expansive vanity projects won’t make us better off. Bureaucrats picking winners does not support risk-taking by entrepreneurs — the Government should be cutting red tape on innovation like limits on biotechnology, not presuming to know what is best.

The Guardian: The most savage attacks on Sunak’s debut budget came from the free-market think tanks, who view Johnson and his cabinet as being a return to Ted Heath and the budgetary laxity of the early 1970s. Matthew Lesh of the Adam Smith Institute warned that “spending like a drunken sailor” was not the way to create a thriving entrepreneurial economy”

This is Money : Matthew Lesh, at the free-market Adam Smith Institute, said: 'It is seriously concerning that the Government is looking at ripping up the fiscal rules. A Conservative government should not implement debunked Keynesian stimulus theories.'

He added: 'Spending like a drunken sailor will not create a thriving entrepreneurial economy. Expansive vanity projects won't make us better off.'

Politico :The extent to which the new approach tears up traditional conservative economics was perhaps best captured by the response of the Adam Smith Institute, a stalwart of the Thatcherite thinking that once defined Johnson’s party.

“A Conservative government should not implement debunked Keynesian stimulus theories,” said the group’s head of research Matthew Lesh. “Some infrastructure and public services spending, as well as supporting individuals and businesses during Covid-19, is necessary. But in the longer-run, spending like a drunken sailor will not create a thriving entrepreneurial economy.”

Other mentions include: The Metro, Daily Mail, BBC News, The Telegraph, The Independent, The Express, City AM (again), The Express (again), Politics Live,  Conservative Home, Morning Star, Breitbart, The Scotsman, as well as BBC national and local radio.