The road to recovery | 23 June 2010

This is a slow-burning budget. Not because Osborne has concealed, like Gordon Brown did, but because the reverse is true. The budget is, as Osborne says, a third of the size but with three times the amount of information. It has layers: some policies and language are there just to assuage the LibDems. Some are pure Tory. James has a brilliant cover piece in tomorrow’s magazine which spells out the political, rather than economic, forces at work in this budget. Osborne, that great player of three-dimensional chess, sees in this budget plans to restore a Tory majority government. The Red Book itself is, for wonks like myself, a joy to read: straight figures, with nothing concealed. The IFS can take credit for this: Osborne’s greater transparency comes because he knows that it’s futile to hide anything. Robert Chote or Gemma Tetlow will sniff it out. But for now, the following questions are mulling in my mind…

1)   This budget marks the end, not the beginning, of ideologically-driven fiscal policy.