Alistair Darling has been on Sky News doing a lap of honour for today’s GDP growth
figures. “Vindicates everything we did,” he said – his narrative being that the extra debt did indeed boost the economy and produced 1.1 percent growth in this quarter. This chimes with
what I wrote in the Daily Telegraph a few weeks ago: that the
economy is better, not worse, than the Tories thought. Even if, or should I say when, the ONS say the figure was wrong and needs to be revised downwards it will still mean tax revenue churning in
at a far faster rate than thought. This will give Osborne a get-out clause if he wants to go softer on the cuts, or the tax rises (any adjustment would have to be consistent with his 80/20 split
between cuts and taxes).
But more importantly, is Darling right? Well, 0.2
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