Breaking: Ed Balls has a point

The games have started a day early, folks. The latest quarterly growth figures are set to be released tomorrow morning, but already Ed Balls is waxing insistent about what they have to be:

“Simply to stay on track for the Office for Budget Responsibility’s most recent forecast, already downgraded three times, we will need to see growth in the third quarter of 1.3 per cent. And to reach the OECD’s latest and more pessimistic forecast, we will need to see a figure next week of 0.9 per cent.”

To be fair — and this is not something you’ll read often on Coffee House — the Shadow Chancellor has a point, although he’s not making it explicitly. When he says that growth needs to hit 1.3 per cent to meet the OBR’s overall forecast for the year, what he actually means is something like, “Ahahahahahahahahahaha, never gonna happen!” And, on that, even George Osborne will agree with him.