Getting to the truth of a Budget is far easier under George Osborne’s new system. His creation, the Office for Budget Responsibility, now writes its own report (pdf here) and it’s like having your own mole in the Treasury flag up what the Chancellor would rather gloss over*. I read its report over the weekend – it’s too rich a document to skim on Budget day. I found a few charts that CoffeeHousers may be interested in.
The graphs are all about Osborne’s decision to defer tough decisions – what James Forsyth brilliantly called his Saint Augustine tendency: give me fiscal discipline, Oh Lord – but not yet. Osborne’s glacial progress on cutting total state spending and his decision to abandon his 2010 debt reduction target (see my earlier blog on six scary graphs) will mean we’ll be spending £75bn on debt interest – way more than education or defence. This has produced the above graph on core government spending – one that that looks so radical as to be incredible.
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