The city now predicts that Osborne will borrow far more than the OBR predicted Alistair Darling would have. It's time for a radical change.
We know from this morning’s unemployment figures that the government’s austerity programme is hurting – and it’s hurting the young and unemployed the most. But is it working?
David Cameron and Nick Clegg asserted in the Coalition Agreement (pdf) that tackling public sector debt was the government’s ‘most urgent task’. It has been revealed this morning that across the finance industry, the verdict is failure.
The Treasury has collated 14 independent forecasters’ predictions (pdf, p.18) for net government borrowing over the next four years.
Their collected view is that chancellor George Osborne will borrow billions more than the Office of Budget Responsibility predicted he would in June 2010 (pdf, Table C7, p.90) – or that the OBR said Alistair Darling (pdf, Table 4.5, p.38) would have if Labour had been re-elected.
Here are the raw figures:
At worst, the government’s swinging cuts have stopped the recovery in its tracks, leading to borrowing far above and beyond what they predicted their supposedly profligate rivals intended. At best, with the European and global economy facing such turmoil, the facts have significantly changed since the general election of May 2010.
The current strategy has failed. It’s time for serious change.
See also:
• Fast spending cuts push economy from fastest quarterly growth for a decade towards zero – Cormac Hollingsworth, November 1st 2011
• Unprecedented growth of 1.3 per cent needed for OBR to meet its projection – Will Straw, October 31st 2011
• For every extra £4 spending is cut, it only cuts borrowing an extra 75p – Cormac Hollingsworth, October 18th 2011
• Growth cut the 2010-11 deficit as fast as cuts – Cormac Hollingsworth, September 22nd 2011
• Without growth will we even halve the deficit? – Cormac Hollingsworth, September 20th 2011
58 Responses to “Osborne set to borrow billions more than Darling was projected to”
William
You mean,bring back the man that abolished the economic cycle?
Anonymous
But Darling was unaware that the Eurozone would implode so his actual borrowing would most likely have been significantly different to what was predicted in early 2010. The austerity measures of the current government are painful for many people particularly the young, but it is difficult for our economy to grow when one of our biggest markets is the Eurozone. One of our biggest industries is financial services and yet many people want to tear one of our biggest sources of revenue apart. The austerity measures mean that we have not become another Greece or Italy, who are having to suffer much greater cuts in public spending than ourselves. The current policies mean that as an economy we are just about keeping our head above water so that after the pain we will not have a false dawn, but a recovery built on solid foundations rather than the prefabricated one which Balls would give us.
Newsbot9
Ah yes, the office of budgetry fiddling.
Also, your comments are badly broken. No option to use another name, your purple background behind everything except the text boxes…
David
Apart from Osborne being economically illiterate, doesn’t this show that the OBR is a bit rubbish at the end of the day?
Newsbot9
“The austerity measures mean that we have not become another Greece or Italy”
On the contrary, shrinking the economy, reducing the rate of tax and the rate of actual tax collection, borrowing more and creating poverty and inequality IS how we’ll end up like them in a few years. The record-low bond yields are NOT the mark of confidence the Government takes them for.