We know, thanks to the Guardian leaks, that the real OBR forecasts for employment are for 1.3mn jobs to be lost in the public and private sectors as a result of £82bn in cuts. Advocates of slower or reduced cuts, £50bn in the March 2010 Budget, need to explain why this wouldn’t result in pro rata job losses (and service cuts), of the order of 800,000.

Perhaps Huhne can clarify when the Lib Dems changed their mind on the deficit? Was it before the election, or in the coalition talks?

Either way, as they come up to their party conference, the Liberals need to take a good look at themselves for propping up this tory government.

And, ‘Fat Bloke on Tour’, good point well made.

And you mention the forecasts, I think the OBR’s forecasts based on Labour’s figures tell a story.

And, Mike, yes, I noticed that too. Talk about letting the cat out of the bag…

if its not about cuts for the sake of cuts

Tell that to the frontline workers in the public sector who are having to limit/cancel crucial services…..A social worker friend of mine is having a meeting today with her team to discuss exactly this!

ConDemNation.

Any info / update on the structural deficit farrago?
Is the output gap still set to 4%?
Have the “Three Brothers Grimm” stopped laughing?

As I have said before a figure for the structural deficit set at 80% of the actual deficit,

(11.0 total / 8.8% structural / 2.2% cyclical)

after a fall in GDP of 6.4% sets new standards for the craven nature of economic forecasting with the dog boiling economic establishment surrounding our elected government.

It is just another excuse for a re-run of the 1930’s and cut the dole.

The point needs to be made that Sniffy’s emergency budget contained £12bill of tax cuts including a significant reduction in the Corporation tax rate over 4 years.

Consequently he cut benefit spending to pay for tax cuts. At an individual level this may be a wash for some people but the one big winner will be the banks and the reduction in corporation tax.

Consequently lots of changes for a another dose of corporate welfare. Transparency and tax fairness need to be pushed hard to increase the tax take from the corporate sector. Tax tourists / hypocrites like RM / NI / Sky need to be named and shamed.

Regarding the deficit and some of your earlier comments, there is some validity in the notion that GB / AD should have set out their reduction / rebalancing plan in Nov 2009. However the big negative in all this is the fluid nature of the Treasury’s “conservative” forecasts for the deficit.

They had a bend on them that Beckham would have been proud of, while the £22bill difference between the PBR in Nov 2009 / £178bill and the actual outcome, latest figure if £156bill would mean that the plan would have been out of date before it started.

Consequently better to wait until the bottom had been reached before planning the way out.

Looking at AD’s plan to reduce the deficit by £50bill over 4 years, then the £50bill investment budget and a thorough shake out of the flab caused by lazy civil servants and indolent ministers would mean that it would have been sore but not catastrophic.

The Sniffy slashathon unfortunately is a completely different matter, the upper middle class dog boilers now in charge seem to positively revel in the pain they are going to cause.

Finally give no ground to the Orange book revisionism that the Club Med debt crisis caused the change of heart. They are scraping the barrel to try and cover their embarrassment of being found out.

Apples and oranges, we have North Sea oil, a floating exchange rate and a history of paying off our debts. They had none of these.

In addition the “markets” have woken up to the fact that is the cure kills the patient, then no matter how bad the original disease they are in a worse position.