OBR doesn’t make case for savage cuts; but Osborne will choose to do so
Faisal Islam blogs on how Sir Alan Budd’s forecast has far from backed up the government’sline on the deficit.
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Faisal Islam blogs on how Sir Alan Budd’s forecast has far from backed up the government’sline on the deficit.
Inflation has come in significantly higher than expected. No crisis yet, but it’s a window on a complicated world of post-election monetary policy. At 3.4 per cent it was last month well above target, but we are still told that this is a temporary ‘blip’ caused by the remnants of the VAT rise, and fuel…
In the few hours before this seminal, historic, semi-colon in the 21st century story of Britain, I advise the three not-so-wise men who have come from afar to gather in Manchester to go on a last minute walk around the world’s greatest city. My home town can illuminate the issues in this election.
It is like the Conservatives have flicked a switch. Today, I got invited into the Conservative war-room and they seem a pretty euphoric lot following the apparent endorsement of their National Insurance plan from Britain’s business elite – George Osborne thinks it’s a “momentous” day in the campaign. And when I spoke to George Osborne,…
Channel 4 News FactCheck examines the claims in Ask the Chancellors.
Shadow chancellor George Osborne’s announcement that he will reverse Labour’s planned rise in national insurance puts clear blue water between the main parites, blogs Faisal Islam.
Ahead of the budget, we already have the start of a Dutch auction between the main parties on bank taxes that seeks to tap into enduring public anger for electoral purposes, writes Faisal Islam.
Changing Britain: two days before a budget that will be the opening shot of this year’s general election campaign, Jon Snow visits Hull to assess what impact the recession has had on voters.
This is the big dilemma that will decide the election. Spend the shock £5- £10bn undershoot on the deficit, or bank it and pay down the national debt. Darling would spend it all, and Osborne would save it all, right? Wrong. The day that February public borrowing was shown to have reached a record seems…
Faisal Islam blogs on shadow chancellor George Osborne’s Mais lecture, and speculates whether it could signal the start of an economic approach that may in the future be dubbed ‘Osbornism’.
Faisal Islam considers the options available to European leaders as they work to bail out Greece from its debt crisis.
Alistair Darling’s pre-budget-report: there are some remarkable facts in the maths, blogs economics correspondent Faisal Islam for Channel 4 News.
On the eve of the chancellor’s pre-budget report, the three main credit ratings agencies are raising concerns about the UK’s AAA status, blogs Faisal Islam.
Can you believe it was almost a year ago that “President Elect” Barak Obama told an ecstatic crowd in Chicago that “Change had come to America”? With less than a month to go before the first anniversary of that speech a lot of people in America are asking themselves whether much of that change has…
So the cross-party crossfire on spending and deficits continues. It is remarkable that the actual underlying figures in this spat are totally unchanged from the figures we first reported on the day of the Budget itself. But there clearly is a problem to be solved, and the political process seems to be shedding more heat…