The year in cuts

As we’re still in that period of the year for looking back as well as forward, I thought I’d share with CoffeeHousers a political timeline I put together. It’s not everything which happened in the political year, mind – but rather the important events in the debate over spending cuts. This debate has, at very least, been in the background to almost every political discussion in 2009, and it will dominate the years ahead – so this kind of exercise probably has some posterity value. But, aside from that, you can also draw a couple of conclusions from the timeline (and I do so below).

Anyway, here it is, starting a bit before 2009 to get a couple of important entries in:

14 January 2008: ConservativeHome calls on the Tories to drop their pledge to match Labour’s spending plans.

12 March 2008: Budget 2008 forecasts Public Sector Net Borrowing of £32 billion, and Public Sector Net Debt of £666 billion, in 2010-11.