Recession

Ed Miliband has penned a combative but incredible piece in today’s Times (£). He makes two substantial points. First, that the coalition is deceiving people: Labour was not to blame for the deficit. And second, the coalition’s cuts package (in its entirety) is unnecessary. Oh what a tangled web he’s weaved. His argument is a maze of conceits, sleights of hand and subterfuge, and he interchanges between debt and deficit at his convenience. But, occasionally, his position is exposed. As this Coffee House graph recalls, Labour built a substantial structural deficit prior to the economic collapse. Tony Blair acknowledged as much in his memoir: ‘We should also accept that from

It is an exciting day for Liberty Osborne, the Chancellor’s daughter, to join him at work. The windows at HM Treasury are boarded up, workmen line the road replacing the bombproof (but not student-proof) glass. Graffiti defaces the walls, but although several politicians are named and shamed in spray paint (‘Why did Nick Clegg cross the road? Because he’d promised not to’) there is nothing unkind about the author of the cuts: George Osborne himself. When we meet the Chancellor at 10.30 a.m. in 11 Downing St, he does not look the slightest bit like a man under siege. Seven-year-old Liberty bounds out of his study, waving at us cheerfully.

The media pack is often blind to an impending political car-crash.  For instance, very few in Westminster, or the media, noticed the scrapping of the 10p tax band until the screech of twisting steel turned heads. The same is happening now in relation to living standards. The media and political establishment are yet to wake up to the fact that working families in Britain are about to become poorer (though hat-tip to Allister Heath for being quick off the mark on this front). The gathering wisdom is that, with the recession now behind us, household budgets will start to recover.  We have just published a new report – Squeezed Britain 

Oh dear. On Wednesday night, we at The Spectator saw David Cameron handing Lord Young his Spectator/Threadneedle Parliamentarian of the Year in the category of Peer of the Year. “Over the decades,” said yours truly, “Prime Ministers have come to value his advice. As Thatcher put it: ‘other people bring me problems, David brings me solutions.’” Not any more – David has brought him a problem, followed by a resignation. Less than 48 hours after picking-up our award, his political career appears to be at an end.   It is true that there are some people who have had a “good recession”. That is: faced no danger of losing their

Admittedly, this is but an item of marginalia in the notebook of British politics – but I’d appreciate CoffeeHousers’ views on it nonetheless. I’m talking about the Tories’ efforts to squeeze an apology out of Labour for the state of the public finances. This is something that they’ve been trying to do since the election, but the strategy has been reheated in the aftermath of Ed Miliband’s election. As Sayeeda Warsi put it on Saturday, “what I noticed in his acceptance speech was that there was … no apology for the role that he had played in the current economic mess.” Other Tory folk have called for that to be

Trust Bob Crow to turn down the charm. Explaining why he was boycotting Mervyn King’s address to the TUC today, the RMT union boss managed to liken the Governor of the Bank of England to both the “devil” and the “Sheriff of Nottingham”. Unsurprising, perhaps – but it’s yet another reminder of why, for the Labour leadership contenders, marching in lockstep with the unions may not be such a good idea. To Harriet Harman, a Labour Party bound to Crow & Co. might be a “progressive coalition”. But to the rest of the country, it will probably look slightly left of sane. Only David Miliband, to his credit, seems to

The Big Tent just got a little bit bigger with the appointment of Stephen Green as trade minister. As most of the papers point out, landing the HSBC boss is something of a coup for the coalition. David Cameron was struggling to fill the role, but he’s ended up with someone who is widely credited with steering his bank through the worst of the financial storm. Even HSBC’s purchase of a dodgy sub-prime company in 2003 has done little to tarnish Green’s reputation. Now that he’s in government, though, it’s worth pointing out that he is yet another minister who has warned of a double-dip recession. Here’s how the FT

As compliments go, there’s something slightly backhanded about Vince Cable’s claim that, “Having worked with [the Tories] at close quarters, I’ve been pleasantly surprised that they’re not as I’d envisaged them.” And that’s just one of the little nuggets embedded within his interview with Decca Aitkenhead this morning. The Business Secretary touches on everything from what he thinks of George Osborne (“he’s clearly able”) to his own ability to craft a joke (“I’m actually quite good at one-liners”). If you want a sense of where Cable is at, then Aitkenhead’s piece is worth a quick read. But if you’re stuck for time, then – as George Eaton notes over the

There has been some speculation, most of it idle, that Boris Johnson will not stand for re-election as London Mayor in 2012. Speaking to the Today programme about the necessity of protecting the Olympics budget, Boris commented on his putative re-election campaign. He said: ‘If things are still going well I would be totally crackers not to have another go at it then. But I’m going to be making an announcement later on.’ Many would describe his tenure so far as a comedy of inertia. I don’t: Johnson battled hard to shield the City from puerile political indignation at the height of the financial crisis. It showed a seriousness and

Asks Iain Martin, and I suspect he’s back in Rentoul territory. It is, nonetheless, a question that merits more than a cursory no in reply. For all his egregiousness, you know where Balls stands: in the crude but distinctive colours of the old left. He is convinced that any approach to spending cuts other than his own will precipitate a double-dip recession. As Iain puts it: ‘Balls is also calculating that the second half of a double-dip recession is on the way and is staking out ground on which he can be the one to proclaim to the country: I told you so.’   In terms of Britain’s economic debate,

Recent events in the Eurozone have led a number of commentators to suggest that we are nearing some repeat of the financial crisis that followed the nationalisation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in August 2008 and the subsequent (and consequent) bankruptcy of Lehman’s. In my view, the current situation is rather different from that in 2008, but matters could turn out much worse. Our situation is not like 2008 (yet) because: – not such a high proportion of AAA securities has been reduced to junk status – there are now slightly more robust resolution regimes in place for banks – banks have a bit more liquidity – US and

By rights, Gordon Brown should fear this debate on the economy more than any other. Here are ten questions I would like to hear him answer:   1. You told Gillian Duffy yesterday that you have a “deficit plan to cut the debt in half over four years.” This was a lie, wasn’t it? Our debt is £771bn now. Your deficit plan ­- ie, to run huge deficits for years – will actually double it to £1,406 billion within four years according to the Treasury. The debt for which Mrs Duffy and other taxpayers are liable would double under your plans ­- yet you told her it would halve. How

Today’s new economic data gives a handy piece of ammo to the Conservatives.  It is untrue that, as Gordon Brown says, this recession was somehow milder than others. The economy contracted by 6.3 percent this time – it was 3.8 percent in the 1980s recession and just 2.4 percent in the early 1990s recession. I feel confident that the Conservatives will get this point across clearly, next time that Brown boasts that this recession has been somehow milder, thanks to his decision to “intervene” (ie, double our national debt). The increase in unemployment has also been worse than the 1990s, but not quite as bad as the 1980s (perhaps because