The chancellor’s plan has failed and we are all paying the price

Within just three months the OBR’s forecast for growth in 2013 has been halved. The economy now looks set to be smaller at the time of the next election than it was when the crash hit in 2008 and our recovery remains the slowest in over a century. When the government took office they thought this year would see the economy expand by 2.9 per cent – their own forecasts now show we won’t reach that rate of growth by 2017.

The economic case for a new approach has never been stronger.