Osborne drops his “virtue”
“Having already broken two of his self-imposed fiscal rules”, reported the Financial Times on 1 July, chancellor George “Osborne indicated on Friday [1st] that he would activate the get-out clause on his third and final rule. “At the Budget in March, Mr Osborne admitted he would fail to meet his promise to cut debt as a share of gross domestic product this year. Last year he rowed back on his cap on welfare spending”. Now he has dropped his promise to put the government budget in surplus by 2020. The rules were only ever shams designed to help the Tories pretend that their social cuts are not...