Osborne as Chancellor is a busted flush. He has come too often to the dispatch box with forecasts which he cannot achieve and catch phrases which are cheered on the day only to become silly later. Yesterday he revealed that the £27 billion or whatever the figure was which he pulled out of the hat in November enabling giveaways and earning feel good cheers from Tory benches, has now become a deficit overshoot of over £50 billion requiring new cuts. In the firing line are the disabled and the vulnerable. Meanwhile tax cuts for the better off and corporations who never pay their fair share are offered as an economic stimulus. But tax cuts on their own never act as a stimulus. They have to come hand in hand with real investment in the economy by the government to create the economic expansion which ensures that although the rates fall, the revenue rises. With growth forecasts going downwards tax cuts will simply reduce revenue.
Like his forecasts, this chancellor’s infrastructure projects are re-announced several times and rarely actually begin. Little bits of cash are released for studies and consultations but the earth movers and bulldozers remain in the depot. The brutal facts are that the economy has not been rebalanced, exports are falling, manufacturing is in decline, a consumer led expansion is beginning to fizzle out as debt levels reach records, after six years of wild promises and idiotic guesses the budget is still in deficit, austerity still rules and the national debt he inherited of £900 million, is now £1.5 trillion and going up still. Any decent Prime Minister would send for the author of such failure and declare that time was up. But Cameron dare not touch this thorn in his side, because the chancellor in turn wishes to move from Number Eleven Downing Street to Number Ten. Ah yes!
Have we not been here before?