The charge against Gordon Brown is that his promise of future investment – instead of cuts – is cloud cuckoo land given the grim public finances. You may think this unfair.
But here is the verdict of the governor of the Bank of England today when asked about the national deficit:
Mervyn King:
“The speed of which the fiscal stimulus should be withdrawn has to depend on the state of the economy. …The scale of the deficit is truly extraordinary. 12.5 percent of GDP is not something that anybody would have anticipated even a year or two ago. And this reflects the scale of the global downturn.
But it also reflects the fact that we came into this crisis with fiscal policy itself on a path that wasn’t itself sustainable and a correction was needed.
There will certainly need to be a plan for the lifetime of the next parliament, contingent on the state of the economy, to show how those deficits will be brought down if the economy recovers to reach levels of deficits below those which were shown in the budget figures.”
Jim Pickard
Kiran Stacey