Labour will regret handing more power to the OBR

The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) will have to sign off on any changes to taxation. It will need to run its slide rule over any spending plans. And it will be mandated to commission an independent panel of experts to approve the Chancellor’s lunch, checking it for nutritional standards, and competitive pricing. 

Okay, it is possible that I made that last one up. But the rest are right: the Labour party has just promised to vastly increase the powers of the OBR, allowing it to scrutinise the government machine in minute detail. In effect, it will surrender control of its economic programme to the same grey bean-counters who have already failed Britain – and that will condemn the country to five more years of dismal stagnation.

As a way of marking this week’s anniversary of Liz Truss’s doomed mini-budget, it may well make a certain amount of political sense.