One question that has been asked all too rarely in coverage of the Spending Review is “why it is being held now?” There is no constitutional or economic requirement for George Osborne to set out spending plans for 2015-16 this far in advance. The current spending period (2011-15) doesn’t end until April 2015 and it would have been prudent to wait until the preceding October (as in the case of the previous two reviews) when more recent forecasts will have been produced.
Osborne’s decision not to do so has everything to do with politics and nothing to do with economics. By announcing spending limits for the first year after the election, the Conservatives’ chief political strategist is seeking to draw the battlelines in his party’s favour. He knows that if Labour accepts his plans it will be accused of intellectual surrender and that if it rejects them it will be accused of fiscal recklessness.
As apprentices of Gordon Brown, who similarly used
the baseline as a weapon of political war, Ed Miliband and Ed Balls were well prepared for this trap. Their pre-emptive response was to accept Osborne’s current spending limits, while leaving open the possibility of greater capital investment. For both political and economic reasons, it was the right decision. While the public remain sceptical of the Keynesian case for higher borrowing,
polls show that they recognise the benefits of investing in areas such as housing, which boost output in the short and long run, generate employment and ultimately aid deficit reduction. With its own currency, its own independent monetary policy and its above average debt maturity, Britain can afford to borrow for growth without fear of a dangerous rise in bond yields. The risks of inaction, in the form of permanently lower growth and higher unemployment, far outweigh the risks of action.
Nearly two years before the end of the current spending period, Osborne’s relentless focus should have been on generating growth (as ConservativeHome’s Mark Wallace
also argues this morning), not on squeezing £11.5bn of cuts out of ministers who may not even be around to implement them. But ever since he entered office, the Chancellor has rarely been able to resist the temptation to put politics before economics. Forget growth, forget jobs, forget deficit reduction even, Osborne has got an election to win and he thinks beating up Ed Balls will help. Your fate, dear voter, is the last thing on his mind today.
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