George Osborne must put spending cuts ahead of tax rises

In 2009, Britain borrowed more, as a share of its national income, than any country that isn’t being bailed out by the IMF and the Eurozone (Greece) or already making drastic spending cuts (Ireland).  That huge deficit is the critical challenge to our economic stability that George Osborne needs to tackle with the Budget today.  We have got away with high borrowing so far on the understanding that cuts are coming now the election is out of the way.
 
If you think tax hikes are the answer, then you’re asking the wrong question.  Our present fiscal crisis is built on a decade of bumper rises in spending, not tax cuts.  Over the last decade, spending rose from 36.6 per cent of GDP to 53.4 per cent this year according to OECD data.  Across the wider developed world, it only increased from 38.7 per cent to 44.8 per cent over the same period.