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Media bias has struck again with reports that UK Chancellor Rachel Reeves is likely to have to find an extra £20 billion to cover lost income due to low productivity.
Here’s the BBC:
A downgrade to the UK’s productivity performance from the government’s official forecaster could lead to the chancellor facing a £20bn gap in meeting her tax and spending rules, the BBC understands.
The Treasury declined to comment on “speculation” ahead of the Office for Budget Responsibility’s (OBR) final forecast, which will be published on 26 November alongside the Budget.
The OBR will deliver its final draft forecast, including productivity – a measure of the output of the economy per hour worked – to the Treasury on Friday.
The forecaster had previously assumed a partial bounce back in productivity growth, but this has never materialised.
This productivity assumption is essential to long-term growth prospects and so, under the current system, even a small changecan alter how much money a Budget needs to raise by several billion pounds.
This is not a new phenomenon.
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The so-called “productivity puzzle” has been a defining feature of the UK economy since the global financial crisis – so, from around 2008 onwards, and especially under the Conservative governments of David Cameron and George Osborne.
Economists were already describing it as a “lost decade of productivity” by the late 2010s.
The idea that the downgrade is a sudden or surprising revelation — or that it only now creates a hole for Rachel Reeves — is deeply misleading.
Here’s the reality:
UK productivity — measured as output per hour worked — flatlined after 2008.
Osborne’s austerity policies, which suppressed public investment and wages, were widely blamed for entrenching this stagnation.
The Tories then shifted to a low-wage, high-employment model that kept people in insecure, underpaid work without raising overall output.
Brexit compounded the problem, as investment fell, supply chains fractured and migration patterns changed.
In other words, this isn’t a new “downgrade” — it’s an official recognition of a long-term failure.
The OBR is simply catching up with what has been obvious for more than a decade: the UK economy has been structurally weakened by policy choices that prioritised cheap labour and low taxes over productivity growth.
It’s also striking that the BBC presentation frames the story as a challenge for Reeves, rather than as a legacy of the Conservatives.
The implication that Reeves’ “Budget hole” has just appeared out of nowhere conceals that it is really the cumulative result of Tory mismanagement and political decisions that stifled productivity for 15 years.
So let’s remember the important facts:
As this crisis didn’t start under Labour, it won’t end with a few accounting tweaks.
The OBR’s downgrade is not new information but a formal admission of long-term decline.
And most importantly: the framing of this as “bad luck for Reeves” rather than “a reckoning for Conservative policy failure” is another example of how official and media narratives shift accountability away from those who caused the damage.
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The ‘productivity puzzle’ that’s draining £20 billion from the economy didn’t start with Rachel Reeves
Share this post:
Media bias has struck again with reports that UK Chancellor Rachel Reeves is likely to have to find an extra £20 billion to cover lost income due to low productivity.
Here’s the BBC:
This is not a new phenomenon.
The so-called “productivity puzzle” has been a defining feature of the UK economy since the global financial crisis – so, from around 2008 onwards, and especially under the Conservative governments of David Cameron and George Osborne.
Economists were already describing it as a “lost decade of productivity” by the late 2010s.
The idea that the downgrade is a sudden or surprising revelation — or that it only now creates a hole for Rachel Reeves — is deeply misleading.
Here’s the reality:
UK productivity — measured as output per hour worked — flatlined after 2008.
Osborne’s austerity policies, which suppressed public investment and wages, were widely blamed for entrenching this stagnation.
The Tories then shifted to a low-wage, high-employment model that kept people in insecure, underpaid work without raising overall output.
Brexit compounded the problem, as investment fell, supply chains fractured and migration patterns changed.
In other words, this isn’t a new “downgrade” — it’s an official recognition of a long-term failure.
The OBR is simply catching up with what has been obvious for more than a decade: the UK economy has been structurally weakened by policy choices that prioritised cheap labour and low taxes over productivity growth.
It’s also striking that the BBC presentation frames the story as a challenge for Reeves, rather than as a legacy of the Conservatives.
The implication that Reeves’ “Budget hole” has just appeared out of nowhere conceals that it is really the cumulative result of Tory mismanagement and political decisions that stifled productivity for 15 years.
So let’s remember the important facts:
As this crisis didn’t start under Labour, it won’t end with a few accounting tweaks.
The OBR’s downgrade is not new information but a formal admission of long-term decline.
And most importantly: the framing of this as “bad luck for Reeves” rather than “a reckoning for Conservative policy failure” is another example of how official and media narratives shift accountability away from those who caused the damage.
Support Vox Political!
With social media algorithms acting as gatekeepers – allowing users to read only what their owners want them to, sites like Vox Political need the support of our readers like never before.
You can help by making a donation:
https://Ko-fi.com/voxpolitical
Share this post:
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