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You remember that “dire economic inheritance” the new government keeps talking about?
Earlier in the summer Rachel Reeves produced a document suggesting the state of Britain’s economy and public finances was so dismal – so much worse than expected – that she would be forced into introducing significant measures (which read: lots more tax rises) in this autumn’s budget.
The only thing is, much of the economic news since then has been, well, not dire in the slightest. Inflation is still low – so much so that earlier this month the Bank of England cut interest rates.
More compellingly, the latest estimates of gross domestic product (GDP) – the broadest measure of economic activity – show that far from being in recession, the UK is growing at a decent whack.
Indeed, having been the second-slowest growing economy in the group of seven leading industrialised nations in 2023, Britain is, at least over the first six months of 2024, the fastest growing member of the G7.
So a lot of people have been scratching their chins and wondering whether the new government might be overstating it a bit.
Might they just be making a political point, aimed at their predecessors in government?
Well, this morning we had the latest public finances numbers and here the picture is considerably closer to the Reeves version than those other bits of data.
The key thing here is to look beneath the overall borrowing figures. There you see a couple of key bits of information.
First, despite the fact that the economy is growing faster than expected, it’s not resulting in a big windfall of tax revenues (as often happens).
Instead, according to the Office for National Statistics figures, revenues are basically in line with where the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) expected them to be around now.
The OBR forecast back in…
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