The battle over the appropriateness of the coalition’s economic policy has truly commenced and the amateurs are no longer dominating. A professional economist has arrived on the scene in the form of the shadow chancellor, Ed Balls, whose energetic interventions, as I suspected they would, are beginning to put coalition ministers on the back foot. Ed is highly effective and is challenging the coalition’s missteps at every turn. His alternative strategy is to cut the deficit more slowly and not to compromise growth.
The shadow chancellor’s Budget broadcast seemed particularly on point and contained a big apology. Balls agreed that regulation should have been tougher but: “Every government in the world got that wrong — and I’d like to say sorry for the part that I and the last Labour government played in that.” And he rightly pointed out that the Tories are not innocent, as they continually argued for even lighter regulation.
Ed had several sound bites that will surely have some resonance with the general public. “Our economy, which was working, has now ground to a halt.” “By cutting too far and too fast, George Osborne isn’t solving the problem — he is in danger of making it worse.” “But George Osborne is going too far and too fast and we’re paying the price in lost jobs and slower growth.” “So I fear that George Osborne’s plan won’t just hurt, it won’t work.” This counterattack seems to be working: at PMQs last week, an obviously rattled David Cameron snapped angrily that Balls is “the most annoying person in modern politics”. Ed is obviously getting to the Prime Minister. Good. That means our shadow chancellor is doing his job.
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Of particular interest are the claims made by Chancellor Osborne that the OECD is a big fan of his policies. He even referred to a letter he received from the right-wing boss of the OECD, Angel Gurria, in which he said that “while this budget contains hard measures, we are convinced that they are unavoidable in the short term to pave the way for a stronger recovery. By sticking to the fiscal consolidation plan set out last year, the United Kingdom will continue along the road towards stability.”
Interestingly, today, in its interim assessment of the G7 economies, the OECD made clear that it thinks that the UK economy will grow more slowly than any other G7 economy except Japan, which has just been hit by tempest and flood. The OECD also revised their forecast for Q2 2011 from 1.3 per cemt to 1 per cent on an annualised basis. At the same time, it upgraded its forecasts for many G7 economies, predicting second-quarter growth in the US, France and Germany of 3.4 per cent, 2.8 per cent and 2.3 per cent, respectively. If the policies are so great, how come the OECD lowered their forecast for growth in the UK but raised it in all the other OECD countries that are not implementing austerity? I suspect Ed may well be picking up on this rather glaring contradiction.