Britain is “bust” says Osborne

A first for British politics – standing room only in a speech about economics. George Osborne was at Policy Exchange laying out his “alternative view” and, as he went, ticking many of the boxes I had for him. The first half of his speech was a punchy critique of Gordon Brown, pointing out times where he and David Cameron had mentioned the debt problem. He “imported deflation from Asia,” he said. – and two years ago the Tories had warned about “an economy built on debt is an economy living on borrowed time.” That phrase is very true now. Labour has repeated the mistakes of its past. Anyway, you can read the rest of the speech here.

He slipped out of the vernacular for the second half of his speech, which wasn’t as good and aimed at the financial sector. It was about banks swapping mortgage-backed securities for gilts, off-balance-sheet liabilities etc.