by Dan Cooke
A charlatan chancellor is as predestined to opprobrium as a philandering preacher.
This government has found a vivid and compelling rhetoric to justify its choice to slash services and squeeze the middle. When George Osborne urges the need to pay off the “nation’s credit card” it resonates with the common sense verity that all should live within their means. The polls show every week that this homely paradigm is the bedrock of government support and the stumbling block for Labour breakthrough.
Yet Osborne’s silver tongue is forked. His strictures on the evils of debt are an indictment in his own case. His ultimate comeuppance is as certain as for a televangelist preaching chastity while screwing half his flock.
The final audit of coalition Britain has not yet been written, but the first draft is the revised forecasts of the office of budgetary responsibility. These show the truth about the preacher when the camera is off. They tell a story of more public borrowing and more private borrowing, even as public and private investment is squeezed. And they tell a tale of premeditated deception on debt.
First, on the great promise of eliminating the structural deficit in one parliament. The OBR concluded in November last year that the chancellor was on course to achieve this objective. This verdict was based on its calculation of the economy’s “output gap”. As the IFS commented at the time, this conclusion was both questionable and critical. If the gap were deemed smaller – and the “trend rate” of growth commensurately lower – then more of the deficit would be deemed “structural” and less “cyclical”.
Fast forward to last week and Osborne’s second budget. Growth was down for 2010, 2011 and 2012 and forecasted borrowing up by another £43 billion over the parliament, more than the difference between Darling’s planned cuts and Osborne’s. But, critically, the estimated output gap was unchanged. While more of the economy’s spare capacity will be unused for longer, the OBR has concluded that it will not waste away for good. So the government can borrow dramatically more while its progress in deficit reduction is deemed on course.
So there will be more debt but it’s not the “bad” debt Osborne rails against. Borrowing a penny more than planned to pay for public services would apparently be a vice, but borrowing more to pay the bills from hobbled growth is presented as a virtue. Osborne has built this paradox on a fiscal test for a “cyclically adjusted current budget balance” based on whether it is projected that there would be no current borrowing at the end of a rolling five-year horizon assuming on-trend growth, regardless of whether such growth rate is actually reached by such point or at all.
Beyond the rhetoric of sound money, a simple truth about this test is apparent. The IFS warns of a danger that it can be met “through policies that are always promised but never delivered”. Or as the Financial Times puts it more graphically, the OBR is like Osborne’s loan shark, urging him to borrow ever more but not to worry because the due date can be extended again and again. This is the role in which Osborne knowingly cast the OBR from the start with the coup of his rolling fiscal test.
But this is only half the story and half the hypocrisy. When the Tories railed in opposition at an economy built on credit, the most telling figures in their armoury of argument did not relate to public borrowing, but private debt. It could hardly be otherwise when Britain’s public debt to GDP ratio was middling by international standards.
What does the OBR have to say about this? Under Osborne’s stewardship household debt is set to rise as a share of the economy in each and every year of this parliament. Not because of booming spending but because of squeezed living standards. More and more families will be using their overdrafts to pay for essentials; using their credit cards to pay the mortgage; succumbing to doorstep lenders to pay the bills when the monthly salary doesn’t last the whole month.
Osborne’s debt bombshell means that the rhetoric of good housekeeping can only be a guilty catechism for many ordinary householders, condemned to fall short of a prudence they believe in by a chancellor who doesn’t practice what he preaches.
For this government to be defeated, its serial deceit on debt must be exposed. Enough of branding it the friend of the banks in the City; it is also the agent of the loan sharks on the doorstep. And Osborne is not a desiccated calculating machine lacking empathy for those he cuts; he is an intuitive confidence trickster, able to play on the hopes and fears of the public while he picks their pockets.
Osborne and Cameron have grounds to congratulate themselves on the way they have set the economic agenda so far. But popularity, when based on deception, must come before a fall. A charlatan chancellor is as predestined to opprobrium as a philandering preacher. Labour’s urgent task is to bring that day of reckoning forward. Before Osborne bankrupts Britain in the name of austerity.
Dan Cooke is a Labour lawyer and activist.
Tags: Dan Cooke, debt, George Obsorne
Eow, very flowery rhetoric – the writer clearly got a £50 Metaphors ‘R’ Us voucher for his birthday and spent it on the bargain shelf (style guide: sometimes ‘less’ is, you know, ‘more’).
But what is the fellow saying.
1. ‘They tell a story of more public borrowing and more private borrowing’
2. ‘Under Osborne’s stewardship household debt is set to rise’
So I thought the (rather tedious) mantra was ‘coots, too far, too fast’. So are you saying Osborne should be cutting further and faster? And are you suggesting that Osborne should be taking away people’s credit cards? The level of private sector debt in this country is of course horrendous but it’s been horrendous for rather a little while now, no? Labour Party sudden converts to good housekeeping are we?
When is your party actually going to show a teeny weeny bit of honesty and attempt to demonstrate how a 3% real cut in public sector spending by 2014/2015 can remotely be described as, ‘too far, too fast’.
Long on flowery rhetoric, short on ideas. (You know, the boring stuff).
And as a PS, can people stop describing themselves as ‘activists’. A trifle bigheaded IMO. Just take it as read that we’re all activists.
Mr. Cooke, stick to being a lawyer.A previous Labour government bases its economic strategy on pumping up government debt, and permitting the banks to indulge in an orgy of lending to the private sector through mortgages and credit cards.Government expenditure up 50 percent,GDP growth up 17 percent.House price boom and bust, more to come.Currency devalued by 25 percent,result inflation.Roy Jenkins did not bankrupt Britain, it was Gordon Brown,and Osborne is just clearing up his mess.
Iain – thanks for such a lengthy response 😉
As you started by saying, sometimes less is more. I guess that is actually my complaint about Osborne – we were promised less debt but are getting more.
And no, that doesn’t mean I think he should cut even harder and faster. I’m afraid this government (and its “activists” if that is what you are) will have to be judged by whether it was correct to promise that this level of cuts will help recovery, and therefore reduce borrowing, or hinder it and achieve the opposite. So far it doesn’t look too good.
I’d like to second @iain ker’s remark about flowery rhetoric.
Dan, you may have a very good point buried in there. But buried it is. And when I read that: “ … popularity, when based on deception, must come before a fall. A charlatan chancellor is as predestined to opprobrium as a philandering preacher … ” the name that immediately springs to mind is not “George Osborne”.
@iain ker, I’m not an activist or supporter of any party. I’m an interested by-stander. As such, I find these little descriptions helpful.
Dan Cooke
‘As you started by saying, sometimes less is more. I guess that is actually my complaint about Osborne – we were promised less debt but are getting more.’
So… let me get this straight. You are saying that Osborne is not actually cutting at all and the economy is getting worse so if he was cutting which he isn’t then he would be wrong to be cutting (too far, too fast) as the economy is getting worse but as he is not cutting and the economy is getting worse then (I’m presuming now) your remedy would be to increase spending even more…or start cutting… or possibly reduce the rate of the increase in spending… or something.
Clear then, as particularly opaque mud.
Iain Ker
Model, activist, woddeva
Brilliant!