During the period when the economy was flatlining, Ed Balls used to respond to anaemic growth forecasts by calling on George Osborne to adopt his “five-point plan” to stimulate jobs and growth, including a cut in VAT to 17.5 per cent, a one-year National Insurance tax break for small firms, a repeat of the bank bonus tax to build 25,000 affordable homes and guarantee a job for 100,000 young people, accelerated infrastructure spending on schools, roads and transport, and a one-year cut in VAT on home improvments, repairs and maintenance. Had Osborne taken his advice, the UK would almost certainly be in a better position than it is now (output remains 2 per cent below its pre-recession peak and real wages, contrary to what David Cameron claimed at last week’s PMQs, are still falling).
But with a recovery finally underway (albeit the wrong kind of recovery), Balls’s focus his shifted from short-term stimulus to long-term investment. In response to the IMF’s upgrading of its growth forecast for the UK in 2014 from 1.9 per cent to 2.4 per cent, he said:
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