By all accounts the “Temu Land Rover” nickname has been rather helpful for Jaecoo…. £37k price point - for the 7 hybrid, about half the price of its competitors

Obviously these are long range forecasts, but I think it shows the upfront aim of the policy - it’s not going to do much direct savings in the coming years, but it starts to address some of the long term worrying fiscal trajectory challenges identified eg in the OBR fiscal risk report, and pretty much for the first time shows the Govt willing to take political pain for that what Lord O Neill called “a golden opportunity”… if the costs of a more limited care service are more like half the £18bn figure some have estimated, there is room to tie long term plans together. That said the savings number is highly contingent on whatever happens to prices and earnings, hard enough to predict over half a decade let alone a few. Clearly if the full NCS kicks in much more quickly there is a gap, that would require tax rises or much faster growth going into the new Parliament.

One wonders if the Canada associate EU membership talk in the middle of which there was a dash by Mark Carney to meet his fellow Evertonian around the G7 table (at a Toffees match), might have had an impact…. There were some echoes of Carney’s long term Canada plan in ydays speech.

Triple lock inspiration?

Former Cabinet minister Darren Jones floats idea of an NCS helping older people, so therefore a rethink of triple lock could be seen as fair… as we discussed on Newscast last week. The timing of what the PM said is interesting - he said the care service was for the next Parliament and election… does raise a question about triple lock in next Parliament. I note the Chancellor did not answer this precise question when I interviewed him in Coventry earlier this month.