George osborne

George Osborne normally shines at Tory conferences. A historian by training, Osborne knows the power of narrative and he had a clear one for the activists today: the recovery started when he took office and its progress has been extraordinary. Many of his claims were well-founded, some less so. Here’s my selection. Let’s start with his statement that ‘Britain is the fastest-growing most job-creating most deficit-reducing country on earth. Britain we did this together.

Rachel Reeves’ interview on BBC Daily Politics may have been excruciating at times (below), but was it really the ‘car crash’ that the Tories are today claiming? Matthew Hancock is crowing that she pointed out the conditions necessary for reducing debt. She said:- 'We are planning to get the national debt down, which means you have to be running a surplus to be able to do that. If you are going to have national debt falling you have to have a surplus overall... To get debt falling you have to have a surplus on overall spending.’  Whether wittingly or not, Reeves went further than Ed Balls. She said she wants a "surplus overall," as distant from the surplus on the chunk of the budget defined as 'current spending'. This is the same as the Tory policy.

Today was set to be a boring day in Westminster. Sajid Javid, a courtier to George Osborne, was billed to give (yet another) speech about how the economy is going ‘gangbusters’ and why evil Labour would trash the recovery. Dutiful hacks were pottering off to the Centre for Policy Studies, the venue for Javid’s speech, when news broke of Boris Johnson’s ‘off the cuff’ announcement that he might stand in 2015 after all. This political hand grenade blew the government’s media plan completely apart. Javid was spotted calling CCHQ for a line to take on the Boris comeback. He duly took to the podium and prepared for questions that would have nothing to with George Osborne’s ‘long-term economic plan’.

The economy has recovered, and is steadily growing. That much is now clear. It has long been assumed that this will help the Conservative Party’s electoral fortunes. The logic goes that, having steered the country through difficult economic times, a grateful public will come out in their droves to thank them for it. But politics is never that simple, and the public are rarely so willing to give credit to politicians. While it may seem perverse to suggest that economic growth is harming the Tories’ electoral chances, continuing good news about the economy is making it less of an electoral issue. Voters are beginning to ask: ‘what next?’ David Cameron and the Conservatives are experiencing a voteless recovery.

Some of what David Smith, author of the essential Economic Outlook column in the Sunday Times, says today will be salve to George Osborne: ‘…the government intended to spend £722bn in the 2013-14 fiscal year. In fact, it spent £714bn. Spending has been lower each year than set out in 2010. Current spending was originally intended to be £679bn in 2013-14. In fact, it was £668bn. Unusually for any government, spending has come in comfortably within budget. There has been no slippage.’ Other parts will not: ‘Where there has been slippage is in tax receipts, which have been weaker than expected.

[audioplayer src="http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_24_July_2014_v4.mp3" title="Liam Halligan and Adam Memon discuss whether another financial crisis is on the way"] Listen [/audioplayer]When I think about global stock markets these days, the image that springs to mind is the final scene of The Italian Job— the 1969 original, not the tacky 2003 remake. ‘Hang on a minute, lads,’ says Charlie Croker, Michael Caine’s heistmaster-in-chief, as he and his rogue brethren balance precariously in a bus loaded with gold on the edge of an Alpine cliff. ‘I’ve got a great idea.’ The film ends ambiguously, of course.

‘Perhaps I should shift my prediction to 23 July 2014,’ I wrote in April 2012. ‘That’s the opening of the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, and we must all start thinking positively about it.’ I was talking about the moment when the nation would at last shake off its economic gloom, which I had previously pinned to the opening of the London Olympics. But that spring we fell back into negative GDP territory (avoiding a technical two-quarter ‘double dip’ only when the first-quarter result was revised upwards to zero) and I felt obliged to ‘elasticate my timetable’. Since the beginning of last year we have had 18 months of robust growth — but pundits less cheerful than me have continued to report a persistent absence of feelgood.

George Osborne has been in retail mode this morning, selling his pension reforms and explaining how pensioners can unlock their life’s savings. The Chancellor has said that the Treasury will work with the Citizen’s Advice Bureau, Age UK and other organisations to provide pensioners with the best possible impartial guidance to transform their retirement. Interested parties can consult the Treasury for more details. listen to ‘Osborne: Russia sanctions would be an 'economic hit' for the UK’ on Audioboo Osborne went on to add that this was what the pension reforms are ‘all about’.