Peter Hoskin

Pre-Budget Report live blog

Welcome to Coffee House’s live blog of Alistair Darling’s Pre-Budget Report speech.  Things will kick off at 15:30 and end at around 16:30.  We’ll be following it up with plenty of analysis.  Stay tuned.

15: 35 Brown is grinning away as the Tories barrack Darling for saying that the Americans admit this all started in America, a distortion of the quote–JGF

15: 40 Darling admits that ‘regulation needs to be made more effective’–JGF
 
15:42: The volumne level rsies as Darling, incredibly, claims that Britain is ‘well-placed’ to handle this crisis–JGF

15:43 Excellent to see Tories very noisy, shouting down Darlings more preposterous claims “living within our means,” “blame it on America” etc. Keep it up. They need to show raw anger–FN

15:45 Darling says Britain “will be affected more directly by a global financial recession”. Surely a contradiction of his statement that Britain is well placed to deal with the current situation–JGF

15:50 Darling lists his negative growth forecasts and then tries to put the Tories on the wrong side of the international consensus.

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