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. (more…)
