Peter Hoskin

Will Osborne stop at £10 billion?

On one side of the Atlantic, there’s Christine Lagarde begging for more cash for the IMF. On the other, there’s George Osborne more or less willing to hand it over on behalf of British taxpayers. This is how it’s been for months now. This is why it’s no surprise to read in today’s Telegraph that Osborne may be ‘close to agreeing’ an extra £10 billion for the fund.

There are the usual caveats, of course: the Exchequer will only stump up if various other countries do likewise, and then the money has to go into one big pot for all the world, not into special mechanisms targetted at the eurozone. But none of that will assuage Tory eurosceptics, who are already the subject of a ‘Who’s gonna join UKIP?’ parlour game in Westminster. After all, that division between countries and currencies may sound very neat in theory, but what if a large chunk of the IMF money goes towards Greece or Italy or Portugal or Spain? They’re all countries, of course.

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