This should be an interesting experiment tomorrow. The Conservatives are inviting economics experts, business students, City people, FT readers etc to comment on the Budget as it unfolds. Here is an introduction to the site (but not the actual one). The idea is to spot the lies, half-truths and statistical sleights of hand which are not unknown on Budget Day*.
Tomorrow you’ll need to visit this site.
I’ll be watching closely for several reasons:
1] Can they avoid disruption from troublesome Labour activists – as happened with CashGordon?
2] Will they get much public involvement for this?
3] Will they have time to unpick the wheat from the chaff? Some public “insights” may be valid, others may be obvious, boring or plain wrong.
4] The exercise is being fronted by Jeremy Hunt, the culture secretary whose relatively low profile is set to be boosted by a prominent role in the election campaign
* For those unfamiliar with “crowdsourcing”, it’s been used by the Guardian on a couple of occasions: notably on MPs expenses and also on the Tony Blair business empire.
Jim Pickard
Kiran Stacey