Osborne’s First Press Conference: Giving Away the Right to ‘Cook the Books’

25th May, 2010 by Webmaster

On May 17th the current Chancellor George Osborne gave his first press conference about the economy. He said some interesting points; the main headline was undoubtedly the £6 billion of cuts announced on Monday 24th May or, as the Prime Minister would say, saving £1 out of every 100 the government spends. When the figure of £6 billion is put like this, it sounds much less scary, but the figure also is worrisome because it represents not a drop in the ocean, but rather a grain of sand in the ocean. If the priority of the government is to cut the deficit quickly, saving one percent will not be sufficient enough. Talking about cuts is a tricky thing to do, cut too fast and it may set the country back, cut too slowly and the deficit and debt increase, the golden figure in terms of cutting public spending is still to be found.

Another headline grabber was the Chancellor giving away his ability to predict forecasts. Osborne accused the former Chancellors, Brown and Darling of being too optimistic, being out by £13 billion. Most damaging of all, he accused the previous government of ‘cooking the books’. Osborne argues that this will reduce the likelihood and make it more difficult for him to ‘cook the books’ because the forecasts will be based on independent analyses given by the newly formed Office for Budget Responsibility.

The government wants to tackle the deficit quickly, but the metaphors used by them about the previous Labour government are ridiculous. The worst one bandied around is that Labour had a ‘scorched earth’ policy, this metaphor conjures up the image not only of Labour wilfully printing money, but burning wheelbarrows of it at a time without a care in the world, making sure that the incoming government would have an extremely hard time clearing up.

It’s good to see the government getting on with reducing this deficit, £6billion is a very small amount, but the real test for this coalition and of this supposed honeymoon will be June 22 2010, the day we learn how much real change Britain has left in the piggybank.