A year ago Liz Truss’ brief government collapsed when markets lost confidence in Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-Budget. A large part of the problem, it was explained at the time, was that the Office for Budgetary Responsibility (OBR) – founded by George Osborne specifically to provide some independent backing for Budget measures – had not been invited to give its views.
Isn’t the real problem that the OBR fails to make any allowance for political events?
But how much use would a judgement by the OBR have been in any case? Let no one say that the organisation has no insight into its own failures. Today it has published a mea culpa on the forecasts it made in March 2021 and March 2022, both extremely important as the first informed a Budget and the second a spring statement. Like Michael Fish and his non-forecast of the 1987 hurricane, it is an exercise in explaining how things went so horribly wrong.
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