ajid Javid was too stingy and held back Boris Johnson’s spending plans. That is why he was forced out: to install a man with a looser hand on the purse strings. So in comes Rishi Sunak, appointed Chancellor to splash the cash in a Budget less than a month into his tenure. Or so financial markets expect. The pound rose and bond yields - the price the Government pays to borrow - followed. That indicates more spending and more borrowing is anticipated. But what does Sunak himself say? Ignore his recent statements. As a junior minister in the Treasury, he was bound to stick with the hymn sheet. Look further back to see what the new Chancellor focused on when he first entered Parliament in 2015. Many of his comments show a determination to balance the books. Going above and beyond the rhetoric of then-Chancellor George Osborne and Philip Hammond, Sunak used his own analysis to vigorously press the case for fiscal prudence. “Every company I have been involved in sets a budget, as indeed does every household in this nation,” he told Parliament in July 2015, coming close to Margaret Thatcher’s famous comparison of the nation’s finances to those of an average family. Crucially for his upcoming Budget, he found a “natural ceiling” on the amount of tax the Government can rake in, and said he sees that as the ceiling for spending too. “Since 1955 tax receipts, with limited variation and remarkable consistency, have averaged 36pc to 38pc of GDP. In spite of the vast differences between Labour and Conservative members in our approach to setting tax rates, the average tax take has been remarkably similar under Governments of both parties,” he said. “There appears to be a natural ceiling to what any Government can extract from the pockets of its hard-working taxpayers. “That to me suggests a simple conclusion: in normal times, public spending should not exceed 37pc of GDP. That is the best estimate of our income as a Government and therefore the best guide to what we can afford to spend.” Compare that to the current situation. Total managed expenditure is set to come in at 40pc of GDP this year. Taking that to the desired 37pc would mean trimming around £66bn off the £880.8bn budget, on the Office for Budget Responsibility’s numbers. Current receipts equal 37.9pc of GDP - a bit closer to Sunak’s rule of thumb, overshooting by £21bn. It is hard to square that with the free-spending Chancellor that the Prime Minister is thought to want. Rather than softening this line, Sunak’s ardour only intensified later in his parliamentary career. “Fiscal responsibility is not just an ideological pursuit. Without a prudent approach to borrowing and debt, ordinary people pay the price. They pay it through slower growth, less fiscal resilience and interest rates that begin to climb,” he said in November 2017. “Global Britain can be built only on the foundation of sound public finances.” Given that he dislikes taxes (“I, like many Conservative Members, have always believed in low taxes as a spur to economic growth”) his comments suggest that tax hikes should be off the table, and maybe a few tax cuts could even be on the way - all of which should, in theory, put towards a restrained approach to spending. There is more to Sunak than budgeting. His early speeches also backed now-popular policies, such as the focus on boosting northern economies (as one might expect from the MP for the Yorkshire seat of Richmond). On northern rail investment, buses, free ports and more, he was well ahead of the crowd. And that points to some extra spending. With this combination of somewhat mixed priorities, what might we get? The idea of keeping a tight rein “in normal times” hints at the possibility of a compromise. One could imagine new fiscal rules allowing a couple of years of splurging, but tightening up to balance the books down the line, for instance. That is not a million miles away from Philip Hammond’s old medium-term plan. If the new Chancellor wants to surprise us all by asserting himself, he may be at his most powerful right now. After all, the PM would be unlikely to sack two Chancellors in a month. If Sunak’s words in the years before he entered the spotlight are anything to go by, the Prime Minister can expect support for levelling up - but not a blank cheque to get there.