It’s back to the British Museum for public finances anoraks. After George Osborne’s speech here yesterday, the IFS are this morning presenting their Green Budget (that’s green in colour, rather than green in outlook). It’s the mid-session coffee break, so I thought I’d fill CoffeeHousers in on what’s been said so far.
The bottom line came more or less immediately, with the IFS director Robert Chote’s introduction. His point was that the next government will have to introduce “more ambitious” fiscal tigthening, going forward to 2015, than that set out in Darling’s PBR. But he added that there shouldn’t really be more spending cuts and tax rises this year. The way things have gone this week, that message may well suit both main parties – although I imagine that Labour, in particular, will make great play with it.
Elsewhere, Michael Dicks from Barclays Wealth suggested that GDP will be much slower to recover than the Treasury thinks – with potential GDP growth at 1.75
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