George Osborne did well in the Commons yesterday and Ed Balls did badly. That, however, is not that. Those who have time to unpick who said what, may find that in Ball’s halting and at times confused delivery, there was an element of truth. They may also find in Osborne’s polished and confident performance a good deal of smoke, mirrors and spin, some clever accounting and a reliance on forecasts, every one of which has thus far proved wrong. This is why Fitch has issued a warning that GB’s coveted triple A rating is looking weak. A downgrade would be a shock to this government, and would blow away whatever fading chances of its re-election remain.
Nevertheless not all is going Labour’s way. Balls gets it right when he says, as everybody does, that you cannot get out of a debt crisis without growth and the sum of all Osborne’s packages add up to little more than tinkering at the edges, enough to keep the show on the road but not enough to get to a better place. After that, the Labour shadow chancellor is so much hot air, because he would do no more than tinker in a different way, whist spending and borrowing more in the process. Nobody steps forward to say with conviction that such an approach would work any better. If you take account of the scale of the problems, nothing thus far advanced by anyone, is of the substance to make a real and effective difference.
Until they do we are looking at many years of austerity, with meagre growth leading to economic decline, from which it is not even clear that a meaningful recovery, using the current inadequate plan, is actually possible, however long you wait.