Growth forecasts down and no coherent narrative – the chancellor delivered a difficult budget statement. Surely not even Jeremy Corbyn could make it worse?Sometimes a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. Given the choice George Osborne would rather have stayed in bed watching Jeremy Kyle. Failing that he’d have settled for appearing on Jeremy Kyle. Anything but give a budget statement in which he would have to admit that nearly everything he’d said on his preceding three budgets had turned out to be either misleading or inaccurate. George fidgeted nervously in his seat before getting the nod from the deputy speaker. A quick sip of water and he was off. “Down-is-up-up-is-down,” he said hurriedly, hoping no one would notice the obvious contradictions whether he raced through his speech quickly enough. We-choose-the-long-term-even-though-our-long-term-arrangement-isn’t-working-I-would-blame-the-final-government-only-I-was-the-final-government-so-I’ll-blame-foreign-countries-instead-we-have-the-world’s-best-economy-apart-from-the-ones-that-are-doing-better-than-us.”Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com