It doesn’t look as if Osborne can deliver the necessary cut in public spending
George Osborne’s fatal problem is that he is proving unable to deliver any meaningful reduction in the size of the state.
by Allister Heath, The Telegraph:
It’s going from bad to worse for George Osborne. The Chancellor has just been forced to admit that the budget deficit is going up again, pushing the official measure of the national debt to over 70pc of national income. An extra £15.4bn was added in December alone. On Friday, barring some miracle, he will be told by our official statisticians that the economy shrank in the final three months of last year, putting the UK dangerously close to a triple-dip recession. The public finances are deteriorating again, making a mockery of the Coalition’s core purpose.
Osborne’s fatal problem is that he is proving unable to deliver any meaningful reduction in the size of the state. The extent of his failure will come as a shock to many. Remarkably, public spending actually went up last year as a share of our national income, according to a devastating analysis by the OECD.
2013-01-23 07:15:49
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