Osborne’s portrayal of the British economy as having “the fastest rate of recovery of any advanced nation in the world”, which he again repeated yesterday, is sheer poppycock. He continues to boast that GDP growth can be expected to average some 2.5% per annum over the period ahead, but on every key economic indicator that is wildly optimistic, not least when the latest quarterly growth figure was just 0.3%. There are several good reasons to believe Osborne is blowing into the wind. Continue reading
Tagged with Growth
Latest growth figure fires Exocet through Tory claims of economic competence
The Tories couldn’t have timed it better for Labour. A week before the election the official quarterly growth figures halved to a miserable 0.3%. If this continues at the same level (and of course it may well sink lower still), it would produce an annual growth rate of just 1.2%, no better than the vilified Eurozone. It completely blows the top off Osborne’s claim to have produced the fastest rate of recovery in the Western world and exposes the emptiness of the constantly parroted “government’s long-term economic plan”.
The Tories have only been able to make two bids for winning the election – the leadership (which Ed Miliband has now neutralised) and the economy, and now this second one too has disintegrated. Why hasn’t Labour gone for the Tories hammer and tongs over this collapse of their central claim? Labour should drop its plans for the last week of the election and concentrate relentlessly day after day on destroying Tory credibility over the economy which they never deserved in the first place. Continue reading
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Osborne’s boasts were lies – his was not a budget for a prosperous Britain
The truth finally came out. Osborne claimed that the deficit was being cut this year when in fact that is only due to the exceptional delaying of tax payments till the end of the fiscal year by the super-rich in order to take advantage of the reduction in the top income tax rate to 45%. Without that, which will never be repeated, the deficit would have risen this year, as on present policies it will rise in future years.
He promised “the biggest increase in real spending for a decade in 2019-20″, but that’s only because of a boom-bust roller coaster after massive spending cuts in 2016-18, which any Whitehall mandarin will tell him is a crazy, not to say utterly irresponsible, way to manage public services. Continue reading
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Why we should say NO to welfare cuts in the next Parliament
There is an auction taking place on the size of the welfare cuts to be imposed in the next 5 years. The Tories are arguing for £30bn cuts in the first 2 years to 2017-8 via no tax rises, £12bn in welfare cuts, £5bn in extra corporate tax evasion revenues, and bigger departmental cuts (up to £17bn). The LibDems accept the overall £30bn target set by the Tories, but propose to reach it by £6bn in higher taxes, £6bn by clamping down on corporate tax evasion, £12bn in departmental cuts, and £3.5bn in welfare cuts. The Labour party has not explained in detail how it would reach its target of eliminating the structural deficit by 2019-20, though the cuts would be less than under the Tories and confined to current expenditure, not capital expenditure. Nobody is saying that there should be no welfare cuts in the next 5 years. But they should be, for several strong reasons. Continue reading
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Austerity and economic failure to continue
The Tory election campaign is based on the claimed success of the government’s economic policy, as the hype around the latest budget confirms. In reality the Tories’ economic record has been unprecedentedly poor. Their economic policy is not primarily aimed at increasing growth or prosperity but rather at effecting a fundamental change in the economy which entails a very large transfer of incomes from workers and the poor to big business and the rich. This project is very far from complete and is set to continue. Continue reading
