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Real change of direction

Alistair Darling adopted the technique beloved of his predecessor of rattling through the borrowing figures. But the news this year was good - it seems lower than it was expected to be. The bumper tax receipts that the government received in January seem to have helped.

But the more significant thing is that borrowing is expected to rise in the chancellor's new forecasts. That marks a real change of direction. In the past few years, Gordon Brown always budgeted for borrowing to fall. Of course, his forecasts were often wrong but he always budgeted for borrowing to come down.

Mr Darling does think that by 2012 borrowing will be right back to where he thought it would be.

Comments   Post your comment

  • 1.
  • At 03:23 PM on 12 Mar 2008,
  • Simon R wrote:

Good news! Were going to export our way out of a possible recession.

Which exporters would those be. Producers (farming, manufacturing and mining) cannot compete in world markets with the Pound over two dollars,added to massive taxes, fraudulant blame claim compensation and ludicous over regulation. Anyway many have already gone. Perhaps we will have to rely on invisible exports, whatever they are (US subprime LOSSES?) or possibly just carousel fraud.

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