I have just been on Adam Boulton’s Sky News show, talking about the forthcoming Autumn Statement with Ann Pettifor, a left-wing economist. “I bet you didn’t expect me to defend George Osborne,” she told me, after our discussion finished. The UK economy is doing well, she argued, because Osborne has been borrowing like a drunken Keynesian (a good thing, in her book). And she does have a point.
The left made a great error when they attacked Osborne for cruel, fast, deep cuts – he is shaving just 4pc from total government spending and giving himself eight years to do it.
To give himself so much time. has had to borrow shedloads of money. As much as Alistair Darling planned to. In fact, he has now borrowed more money in five years than the Labour Party did in 13 years.
Right now, in Year Five of his tenure at the Treasury, the national debt is rising at £3,000 per second – debt that households will have to pay off.
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