I wonder if he views the downgrading of growth forecasts in the same way. Labour always overestimated growth, so no one should be surprised that instead of 3-3.5% growth we now expect 2-2.5%. This means it will take far longer to pay down the structural deficit if growth is weak. Alistair Darling knows this, but he won't admit it.
And don't you just love this line from Ed Balls...
"We now hear that unemployment is heading back to three million under the Tories. If anything makes me want to lead our party it's the chance to do something about it."
Unemployment is heading back to three million precisely because of the policies followed by Ed Balls and his colleagues. I don't think even the most partisan Labour supporter could say with a straight face that four weeks of a Tory/LibDem coalition had led unemployment to rise to 3 million. Except perhaps Ellie Gellard.
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Well, being £11bn better off is good.
Unless your starting base is a £166bn deficit.
Any man who reached adulthood with the ludicrous Marxist beliefs of Alastair Darling, while benefitting from one of the best educations that private money (Loretto) and the taxpayer (Aberdeen, Faculty of Advocates) could buy, cannot be taken seriously.
The fact that he is somehow viewed as a "safe pair of hands" by some commentators demonstrates the intellectual bankruptcy at the heart of the Labour Party.
Iain, YOU know more about economics than Darling.
Is it still true that every outgoing labour government has left office with higher unemployment than when it entered it?
Come on, you are being unfair here.
Anyone would think that the last Labour government blamed economic problems on the last Tory Government (1997) or even Mrs Thatcher (1991) ?
Surely four weeks is sufficient to make a significant difference by comparison ?
Note: title is wrong, as forked tongues tend to be in a different part of the anatomy.
"I don't think even the most partisan Labour supporter could say with a straight face that four weeks of a Tory/LibDem coalition had led unemployment to rise to 3 million."
Labour supporters have never felt any need to connect with reality, for the simple reason that reality fails to justify them. It is like asking a Christian to justify the doctrine of the Trinity. Pointless.
They are perfectly aware that Socialism has been a disaster, but they do not care.
Martin Wolf, in Friday's FT, had some strong concerns about what the Chancellor might be planning, and the bad effects it might have.
Ellie is a Dylan.
From Dan Hannan
"There has been much anguished debate about the proposals to trim spending by £6.2 billion. In contrast, there has been barely a whimper about the £8 billion committed to the EU's bail-out fund by Alistair Darling in his outgoing act as chancellor."
See his article in the DT...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/danielhannan/7823638/David-Cameron-doesnt-want-a-row-but-the-EU-wont-give-him-any-option.html
I would like to apologise to the people who burgled my flat last summer. I initially thought they'd taken everything. It turns out I was wrong: they left me my Queen DVD collection. I'm truly grateful.
True but its fair to say Gideon will make things even worse if he cuts spending too much in the budget.
Unemployment is the main problem in UK today. Why not UK government doing something for it? Of course there are many limitations but there are hope too. A lot of work to do for labour party who are newly elected. http://mysafepregnancy.info
Unemployment was merely hidden by New Labour by increasing public sector non-jobs which have helped to bankrupt us.
Thet're a bunch of con artists.
If you hadn't mentioned Ellie Gellard at the end, I would have had to. I have never encountered anyone with such an obvious disconnect with the real world around them.
Labour politicians lie; so what's the news.
We are going to get acres of revisionism from Labour about the last thirteen years, and you can be sure that by this time next year half the saps that voted for them will be convinced it was the Tories fault all along and black is white.
You are incredible - you have clearly believed all the spin from Cameron, Osborne and Clegg in the last 14 days.
The significant point about the data released today it that it gives the lie to all the scare stories from that lot that the economy was much worse than Labour was pretending in the last few months.
Osborne has said repeatedly about Labour / Darling telling lies in forecasts.
Daniel Hannan's comment about 8 billion to europe is money that has not yet and in all likelihood will never be used !!! Of course Tories do not spin!
The most worrying thing to me is that out of the Labourites Darling seems the most sensible budget-wise. At least he has admitted they made mistakes and he tried to stop gov't from overspending.
And that frightens me...
Sorry, Iain, but your post is a bit "unthinkingly" tory. Even Fraser Nelson at the Spectator doesn't buy the Tory line.
More interesting (and balanced) is Philip Stevens' piece in the FT today.
Darling is right in that Cameron tried the old trick of "the books were worse than we thought" and we now have proof that it was a blatant lie. As you say, nothing to really brag about though.
Balls is just an embarrassment to the Labour party.
Well I suppose once those unemployment numbers start falling (any day now surely) we're going to owe you an apology.
How good is your maths?
According to statistics.gov.uk the "UK Government Debt & Deficit" web page says the deficit was 11.4% of GDP. It's gone up since then. Debt is 70% of GDP.
So if growth is 2.5% and you take 11% from it you get --
8.5%. I understand that GDP won't fall in simple term if Government spending falls. But it does include expenditure and when youre paying a lot less in benefits to poor people or wages to consultants then GDP will fall
If you want to pay the debt back over 20 years that's a further 3.5%. Something like -12%.
Darling was saying on Bloomberg that we should encourage growth to pay the debt and deficit. I don't see how that can happen.
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