“Rishi Sunak has discovered the power of social democracy,” says Will Hutton in The Observer. His ambitious package to address the cost-of-living crisis is a perfect example of social democracy’s best traditions: taxing windfall profits that resulted from “unearned and unexpected good luck”, and directing the proceeds to alleviate an equally undeserved fall in living standards among the poorest and most vulnerable. Sunak may protest that he remains a “tax-cutting chancellor committed to Thatcherite small-state principles”, but he’s no fool. All his government’s successes come from doing the opposite – the furlough scheme, state-boosted vaccine development, and now taking on the cost-of-living crisis. Conservative reactions to any of these would only have led to “political dead ends”.