The release of the Q2 growth figures is still half-an-hour away, but Westminster is
already on the boil. Much of the fuss and froth is because it’s expected that the economy barely grew at all between April and June, or perhaps even shrank. But some of it is down to this Telegraph story, which suggests not just that “Downing Street aides
[have] become increasingly impatient with a lack of growth,” but that David Cameron’s permanent secretary, Jeremy Heywood, recently held a meeting with Treasury and Business officials, and
“read them them Riot Act”. So is the longstanding friendship between Dave and George fraying at the edges? Benedict Brogan says not, but adds that things are far from rosy when it comes to their
respective teams.
Aside from that, you just know that Ed Balls is salivating from the sidelines at the prospect of wading onto the field. I have an article in today’s Times (£) setting out the sort of game he and Osborne will play today: a combat to the death, where the weapons of choice are words and phrases like “Plan B” and “bankruptcy”. It will undoubtedly make for good bloodsport, but it is also inadequate to the situation facing us. So long as the political class fixates on quarterly growth figures for the whole economy – important though they are – it helps obscure the fact that parts of the country have effectively been in recession for decades. They might quibble over a couple of fractional percentage points here and there, but what about places like Merthyr Tydfil in South Wales, where some estates have 40 per cent of their population on out-of-work benefits? That isn’t slow recovery. It’s no recovery at all.
It’s not that the government doesn’t have any policies for these areas. Welfare reform, schools reform, corporation tax cuts – all should help ease some of the problems. But we so often see them through the prism of economic growth: as little pockets of depression that drag down as surely on lives as they do on the country as a whole. So, while we’re talking about Plan A-pluses, much more might be done to spur growth in the Merthyr Tydfils, Middlesbroughs, Glasgows and Liverpools, from tax cuts to infrastructure projects and beyond. Indeed, I’d be keen to hear CoffeeHousers’ ideas. The comments section is yours.
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