Osborne's Speech
The Conservatives have sent me what he plans to say, which is nice of them. The man appears obsessed with 'competing' with other nations, for instance:
He has increased taxes at a time when our competitors are reducing theirs.
He has dramatically increased spending as a share of national income at a time when our competitors are controlling their spending.
and
It is making Britain less competitive, hitting family tax bills and jeopardising jobs.
and
Under our approach we share the proceeds of economic growth between public services and lower taxes. It is the sustainable path to lower taxes. It will make Britain more competitive and protect jobs.
and
competitiveness to safeguard your job
and
Under Labour, the underlying drivers of prosperity are in decline. Britain’s competitiveness is sliding
and
All this means that since 1997, Britain has fallen from 4th to 13th in the World Economic Forum ranking of international competitiveness.
The last is a particularly uninteresting example, especially where future growth is concerned. In 1994 the IDB's competitiveness index had Japan top and Germany third. These countries had a terrible growth record in the decade after that. The index had no predictive power.
Other than that it's very difficult to find anything of substance, and particularly little in the way of policy programmes. Growth will be shared between public services and tax cuts, which we knew, but tax cuts will be second fiddle to sorting out the public finances (which if they are in as bad a mess as Osborne claims means there will be no tax cuts in the first term of a Cameron government).
posted by Matthew @ 1/23/2006 02:00:00 PM
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