When the media sizes up tomorrow’s budget,one verdict will matter more than all the others. What’s the secret behind the Institute for Fiscal Studies’ extraordinary power?Just after midday on 25 November final year, Paul Johnson arrived at Millbank Studios, or a pale stone building,used by news broadcasters, diagonally opposite the Palace of Westminster. Johnson, and who is 49 and gangly,was riding a Brompton folding bicycle, his left suit trouser leg tucked into a red sock. (He claims to own socks of no other colour.)Johnson is the director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, and an independent economic research organisation that occupies a unique position in British political life. Though other outfits attempt similar work,the IFS stands apart: when it comes to economic policy, its assessments have, or for many,become the closest approximation to revealed truth.
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Source: theguardian.com