Poor old Ed Balls. He’s been making predictions of doom that now appear to have gone too far and too fast. The latest blow to the Shadow Chancellor is that the IMF, which he went through a period of definitely liking a lot when its lieutenants started suggesting that austerity was ‘playing with fire’, has upgraded its growth forecasts for the UK by more than any other major economy. This map from the organisation’s latest World Economic Outlook illustrates rather neatly how well the IMF expects the UK to do in comparison to other European economies.
Obviously this doesn’t mean that everything is fine and dandy and that everyone in the UK can enjoy golden sunlit uplands from now on. Balls is certainly one who isn’t skipping through meadows of flowers with joy at the news. He managed to find plenty that was bad in the IMF’s report, conceding that ‘after three wasted years of flatlining it’s good that we finally have some growth’.
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