Osborne has as much chance of a budget surplus in 2018 as of the Titanic resurfacing | Michael Meacher

Last Updated: May 21, 2015By

A reality check for Gideon:

The Treasury Red Book accompanying his April 2015 budget states (p. 22) that public sector net borrowing was £97.3bn in 2013-4 and only reduced by £7bn to £90.2bn in 2014-5.   The same table is now predicting that it will fall by £15bn this year, then by £36bn the next year, then by another £27bn the following year, and by a further £17bn the year after that. Does anyone seriously believe this?

Another yarn that Osborne likes to boast about is that he’s halved the deficit.   He has done no such thing.   The deficit peaked at £157bn in 2010, and Alistair Darling in his his last two expansionary budgets brought this down, bearing in mind that it takes 12-18 months for budget measures to work their way through the economy, to £118bn by 2011-12, a reduction of nearly £40n in 2 years.   Osborne’s austerity budgets then drastically slowed the reduction to just £26bn over 3 years.

Britain under Osborne is facing neither a recovery nor elimination of the deficit, but a serious risk of a third economic recession.

Source: Osborne has as much chance of a budget surplus in 2018 as of the Titanic resurfacing | Michael Meacher

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6 Comments

  1. Bill Kruse May 21, 2015 at 7:00 pm - Reply

    He’ll have trouble blaming that on the previous administration. The Tories will soon find they’ve gone too many times to the well :-)

    • Jonathan Wilson May 22, 2015 at 8:02 am - Reply

      He will have no problem on blaming it on the previous administration, he will blame his yellow enablers for not allowing him to cut as much as he wanted. He has probably got all his excuses lined up all ready because with no coalition his ineptitude will have no, real, excuse this time.
      I foresee lots of video clips of Gidiot being even more stoned than previously as the stress gets to him.

  2. John Gaines May 22, 2015 at 9:06 am - Reply

    Yeah, and its such a pity that dumbo Balls could not articulate this during the Election massacre of the Labour shambles. What is the point of this now, we all have to suffer because Two useless Pratt’s were ‘leading’ the Party ( obviously to its inevitable DOOM) and, you know what, it does not appear that anything will change. In so long as this type of comment continues to pass itself of as some kind of weird anti Tory propaganda, all it does is prevent any potential re-building of much needed Labour philosophy…can we not move on and begin to be effective and constructive.

    • Mike Sivier May 22, 2015 at 9:23 am - Reply

      Not with people like you passing comment, apparently.

  3. Chris May 22, 2015 at 4:33 pm - Reply

    A deficit is not a national debt. The UK has had a deficit for 300 years to no ill effect.

    National debt is rising to pay for welfare admin, that is mostly privatised. Where have we heard that before.

    This is what the Tories have done, stretching back in time to 1978 that is coming home to roost next year.

    We are already hearing the cries of the Tory wives, with a phone in tsunami to pension investors:

    http://swansengland.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/did-government-hoodwink-us-all-as-far.html

    Why?

    Because works and private pensions are also hit, and have been hit in the past by going bust.

    Now we have the mis-selling of SERPs industry starting up, as well as the FSAVCs – Free Standing Additional Voluntary Contributions to your works pensions.

    Not the in-house AVC through your employer.

    These mis-sellings keep happening again and again.

    But if you are over 55 you can’t go after the SERPs mis-selling, and that is only in the private pension industry.

    The SERPs mis-selling by government is a given piece of moral thieving from pensioners.

    Where are the Labour supporters shouting from the rooftops of the con that is the flat rate state pension from next year?

    Why don’t you widely share my lone petition against the flat rate state pension, that will never be flat and never be single tier.

    It is – as the Tories said all those years ago – a ploy to reduce the state pension or even begin its ABOLITION.

    • Mike Sivier May 22, 2015 at 6:05 pm - Reply

      You think the national debt is rising to pay for welfare?

      What an original thought.

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