The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 28 April 2012

issue 28 April 2012

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The British economy went back into recession, shrinking by 0.2 per cent in the first quarter of 2012, following a contraction of 0.3 per cent in the last quarter of 2011. Government debt rose by £117 million over last year’s figure, to £1,022.5 billion, equivalent to 66 per cent of GDP. George Osborne, the Chancellor, lent the International Monetary Fund another $15 billion to help it bail out countries in the eurozone. In the Commons, Ed Miliband, the leader of the opposition, had earlier characterised Mr Osborne’s Budget as an ‘omnishambles’. Nadine Dorries, a backbench Conservative MP, called David Cameron and Mr Osborne ‘two posh boys who don’t know the price of milk, but they are two arrogant posh boys who show no remorse, no contrition, and no passion to want to understand the lives of others — and that is their real crime’. The Commons Public Administration Committee said that ‘the government’s inability to express coherent and relevant strategic aims’ was leading to mistakes and muddle.

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