Osborne gets upfront about our debt burden

A couple of weeks on holiday, and there’s plenty to catch up on.  First, though, George Osborne’s speech to Mansion House yesterday evening.  In terms of substance, it was fairly radical stuff.  And it’s encouraging that so many of the Tories’ solid plans for reforming the financial regulatory system have survived the coalition process.  But, really, it was one simple, little sentence which jumped out at me.  This:

“Debt [is] set to still rise even at the end of this five year Parliament.”

“So what?” you may be thinking, “we knew that already.”  Ah, yes, but we’ve rarely heard a politician be quite so upfront about our debt position before – at least not voluntarily.  Contrast, if you will, with Gordon Brown’s claim to Mrs Duffy that Labour would “halve the debt” in four years.  He meant the deficit, of course – or at least he should have meant the deficit, our government’s annual overspend – but, as we know, the two d-words got horrendously mixed up during the election campaign.