Darling gets adamant
Peter Hoskin 9:04am
Aside from all the talk about the Speaker in this morning's papers, it's worth reading Alistair Darling's interview with with the Times. What do we learn? Nothing much - but the adamant defence he puts up for his Budget growth forecasts is quite striking in itself:
"I am not going to change my forecasts," he said. "I remain confident that we will see a return to growth at the turn of the year."
The politics of this is fairly interesting. If you remember, the last time Darling concoted some dubious growth statistics - albeit even more dubious ones, in last year's PBR - he started backtracking quickly enough in the face of public ridicule. Not so this time; which suggests he may actually stick close to these growth forecasts in the PBR later this year. Does the Chancellor genuinely believe them? Or is he creating room for a spending splurge, to be "paid off" by better growth than everyone else expects? Taxpayers - and the Tories - should fear the latter case.
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Chris lancashire
May 20th, 2009 9:23am Report this commentIt's politics not economics. Nobody - including the Treasury - believes growth will return by the end of this year. And even when it does, the debt mountain should preclude any sane government from doing anuthing but cutting its expenditure.
In the same Times interview he says something along the lines that "the country needs to learn to live within its means" - we know that - they don't.
Major Plonquer
May 20th, 2009 9:24am Report this commentI think this is what Gordon Brown meant when he called from 'loot and blanche' reform.
Rhoda Klapp
May 20th, 2009 9:29am Report this commentWhat odds that he will be still in his job to see it, what with one thing and another. Still he did his best to prop up the housing market.
Mike, Brighton
May 20th, 2009 9:46am Report this commentI cannot listen to a single word Darling our so-called Chancellor says. As a "convicted" expenses flipper and trougher his credibility (which was already shot) is now zero.
How can the government persist with such a man in such a senior position?
How can the government chase me for taxes when the man in charge of HMRC is a tax fiddler?
TrevorsDen
May 20th, 2009 9:59am Report this commentIf any sort of growth returns it will be at the expense of QE and an inevitable dose inflation. The CPI is still above the govts target range.
The govt will not care a fig about inflation before the election. How tough will the Governor of the BoE be??
James
May 20th, 2009 10:20am Report this commentI have a friend who works at an investment bank, and their international forecast is that the UK will return to growth later this year. It won't be spectacular - but GDP will stop falling.
Obviously this is just another forecast and may also be wrong.
The greater problem in the Treasury forecast is very high growth in 2011 - which does seem unrealistic unless we have created another bubble.
AB
May 20th, 2009 10:22am Report this commentIts actually more dangerous than that, growth will rebound later this year because the collapse in the economy has been so severe. That will give Brown/Darling a chance to claim their policies have worked and ramp public spending still further.
The nature of the UK's problems are such that we're going to endure 10 years of low growth as we work our way out of the debt overhang created by Labour but that doesn't mean we won't see year on year growth in GDP starting from late 2009.
seb
May 20th, 2009 10:49am Report this commentI reckon Wendy's saying things like this because he's got another job lined up for the middle of next year. It might only be a few hours a week in the burger bar that shares his name [i.e. the name I think suits him best] but it's probably a better show than many other New Labour MPs can look forward to.
George
May 20th, 2009 12:07pm Report this comment4 weeks ago a letter in the Daily Telegraph suggested that Alistair Darling's over-optimistic forecasts qualified him to be another Comical Ali. Since then there was nothing heard from him until today.
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