Rhetoric aside, what’s the difference between left and right in British politics? You won’t catch either party quantifying it, because the answer embarrasses both. The ever-cautious
George Osborne is cutting just 0.6 percentage points a year more from government departments than Labour planned to (see table, above). The great joke is that the difference between the two parties
is actually within the margin of error. Government is a gargantuan machine that just can’t be controlled to that degree of precision: a billion quid is, to Whitehall, a rounding error.
Today’s public finances have demonstrated that. The UK government had actually intended to borrow around £102 billion at this stage in the financial year, and instead it has borrowed
£93 billion. This is due to less spending, rather than more tax receipts. So Osborne has, in theory, £9 billion extra to play with in next month’s Budget.
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