‘We have reduced the deficit by a quarter in just two years’ — the coalition’s mid-term review.
True. But when Gordon Brown proposed to do precisely the same in Labour’s last budget, George Osborne criticised him for not moving fast enough and endangering the economy. The ONS shows that public sector net borrowing was down 24 per cent from 2009-10 to 2011-12. But George Osborne cannot claim to have stuck to his deficit reduction plan. That has been torn up. The below graph shows Brown’s plan (in the middle), Osborne’s original plan (at the bottom) and his current plan (at the top):
As you can see, Osborne is now cutting the deficit more slowly than Alistair Darling proposed in 2010. Darling planned to cut the deficit by 33.9 per cent by this year, compared to the 24.3 per cent Osborne has actually managed.
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