George Osborne (7) on a shooting event organised by the Bullingdon Club. His shotgun approach to the UK economy could be more damaging.
The news today that economists and fiscal experts disagree with the Conservative Party and George Osborne does not come as a surprise. George Osborne, who has never managed his own business, or indeed worked outside of the Westminster bubble in banking, is leading Britain down a very dangerous path which could very well lead to a double-dip recession.
More than 60 academics have issued a stern rebuke to the claim by George Osborne, the shadow chancellor, that a consensus of economic experts supports his policies.
It is total fiction that there is ever a consensus in economics and it was sheer opportunism for the inexperienced Shadow Chancellor to claim, once again, that people agree with his position, when they do not. His latest position comes after he claimed Lord Stern was advising the Conservative Party, which was later rejected.
George Osborne has very little credibility in the City of London. This latest position highlights his weakness and the risk to the British economy under his stewardship.
In two letters, one led by Lord Skidelsky, a biographer of JM Keynes, and former monetary policy committee member David Blanchflower, and the other led by Lord Layard, emeritus professor of economics at the LSE, the economists have written to today's Financial Times to warn that starting a fiscal squeeze immediately could jeopardise the recovery, and "for the good of the British people, the first priority must be to restore robust economic growth".
They argue that the increase in the deficit in the last two years was unavoidable, given that the UK has just experienced the most severe recession since the second world war and GDP has fallen by 6%, forcing emergency government action to prevent the economy "falling off a cliff".
The economists are worried that the immediate slashing of funding to the public sector will lead to massive job losses, which will fuel a double-dip recession. This before the private sector has had enough time to recover. This would then lead to a spiral of decline and arguably social decay and increase in crime.
The Tories can not be trusted to manage the economy.
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No indeed not.
ReplyDeleteYour economic studies are rather more modern than mine. So you may make better exposition of:
“Britain’s GDP per per capita rose 21 per cent since 1997, with GDP overall rising 28 per cent, behind only Canada (35 per cent) and the US (31 per cent).”
Was this of the G8 or G20 countries?
Does Anyone believe that Osborne's husbandry would have come close?
Does their criticism of letting the Bank of England set interest rates mean that Osborne wants to do that himself. (I conceive a poster now somehow . . .)