Osborne’s summer of pain starts here

It has mostly been a weekend of terrible and grisly news, especially with the details emerging from Norway about Anders Behring Breivik and his murderous brand of politics. But there was also, behind it all, a slight rebalancing of the British political debate. After weeks of grandmaster-like focus on the phone hacking scandal, our politicians have started talking about the economy again. With the GDP growth figures for the second quarter of this year due out tomorrow, they’re all trying to get their spin in early.

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There were a number of intriguing interventions, not least George Osborne’s hint that he will cut “very high tax rates” in his Pre-Budget Report this autumn, and Ken Clarke’s insistence that, what with the prevailing economic conditions in America and Europe, the “icebergs are the worst in the lifetime of anyone now living.”