George Osborne, the shadow chancellor, has just announced eight “clear and transparent benchmarks for Britain” in a speech made at the British Museum. Now I know it was this morning that he made the speech and not during the night, but I still feel that he has left us largely in the dark.
He stated that it was time to change the old economic model of the past decade, one which was based on a public spending boom, an overblown banking sector and unsustainable consumer borrowing fuelled by a housing boom.
He said that the Conservatives would rebuild the economy on more solid foundations. Yes, but Gordon Brown is hardly looking to a public sector boom and huge consumer borrowing to get the economy back on track either.
Would a night at the British Museum with George Osborne leave you any the wiser?
Osborne set out eight economic benchmarks on which the Conservatives would be judged. These included: ensuring macro-economic stability; creating a more balanced economy by increasing exports, business investment and savings as a share of GDP; lowering youth unemployment; improving Britain’s tax competitiveness with other countries and improving business regulation; making sure all regions gain from this increased prosperity driven by the public sector; reforming the public sector so that it provides more for less; a safer banking system; and, boosting environmentally friendly technologies to foster a green economy.
Most of us could have listed these points, but the question is how they are to be achieved. He promised that a Conservative government would “eliminate a large part” of the budget deficit. Well, that’s good, but he said that they would go further than Labour’s plan to halve the budget deficit in four years.
The Conservatives have been losing ground in the latest polls, because they have seemed in recent weeks to be giving the impression that they are to make swingeing cuts in government spending. However, all Mr Osborne said this morning was that they would “make a start” this year.
Lots of worthy platitudes, but the detail appears to be non-existent.
Tags: cuts, macroeconomic policy, public spending
