Once upon a time, there was a common experience for newly appointed Treasury ministers following a change of government. Officials would sit them down and take them through the state of the public finances and the prospects for the future – spending, tax receipts, growth and so on. These would be the same officials who had worked on the pre-election Budget delivered by the previous chancellor only a few months previously. Mysteriously, the forecasts would have taken a turn for the worse. It was certainly the experience of those of us who were part of the new Treasury ministerial team in 2010.
There are, to be fair, advantages to an incoming government in being able to say that it has now been able to look at the books and discovered that the fiscal situation is even worse than previously thought. Such a revelation can justify taking tougher action than was promised in a general election campaign. (“Oh dear me, things are worse than we thought, we are going to have to put up VAT,” was our response.)
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