Battle of the Chancellors: We don’t need a Plan B

Nearly a third of the audience at last night’s Spectator Battle of the Chancellors debate arrived not knowing whether George Osborne’s plan was working or whether a plan B was in order. It was all to play for, and the six speakers attacked the task with quite some gusto. Former Labour Chancellor Alistair Darling kicked off the debate by looking back to his own time in the Treasury, telling the audience that this was a crisis of the banking system by using an alarming anecdote of a conversation with a senior banker in the midst of the 2008 crisis.

‘He said, “I just want to give you some confidence, some reassurance: my board met last night and we agreed from now on we will only take risks we understand.”‘

Darling contrasted his own response to the crisis – ‘back in 2009, our economy was growing and it grew right into 2010’ – with the government’s approach, arguing that ‘austerity on its own isn’t working: we have not got growth’.