Rishi Sunak faces one of the toughest decisions of his four months as Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, with the livelihoods of millions dependent on his next move.
After taking the unprecedented decision to pay 80% of the wages of more than 8 million workers as the coronavirus swept through the U.K.
in March, he has promised to set out next week how he will start to scale back the program. It will be the biggest test of how hard the former Goldman Sachs Group Inc.
banker will find it to turn off the spending spigot after committing unprecedented sums to prop up the U.K. economy, burnishing his own political reputation and earning the tabloid sobriquet “Dishy Rishi" along the way.