It’s quite hard to fail in politics, says Chancellor

Rishi Sunak said it is “quite hard to fail” in politics as he described the Government’s handling of the pandemic.

And the Chancellor, speaking on former political adviser Jimmy McLoughlin’s podcast, also said it is “pretty special” to have two daughters.

Mr Sunak said the pandemic has encouraged civil servants to take risks and try new methods, even if those resulted in failure.

“In Government and in politics, it’s quite hard to fail, right?” the Conservative MP for Richmond in North Yorkshire said.

“Because when you do it’s all over the newspapers or there’s this committee, and everyone’s having a go at you for failing.

“But we persevered with it. And I think maybe we were fortunate because there was a crisis (with coronavirus).

“That gives you a little bit more latitude to move fast because you have to try different things. People are probably a bit more willing to accept that that’s necessary in a crisis.”

The proud family man also told the former adviser to Theresa May and Boris Johnson of his delight at being the father of two daughters.

Mr Sunak said: “I was rooting for a second girl after we had our first, and having two sisters in the house is really special. Look, the one thing we try to do is just (provide) a lot of strong role models for them.”

It comes after the Chancellor argued that it would be irresponsible to “duck difficult decisions” when Commons Leader Jacob Rees-Mogg called for the rise in National Insurance to be scrapped to relieve pressure on households struggling with the soaring cost of living.

Amid a Cabinet rift, Mr Sunak said on Thursday that he understands “people’s anxiety and concern about rising prices and inflation” but defended the increase of 1.25 percentage points as necessary to tackle the backlog in the NHS from coronavirus.