"The ghost of the OBR stalks the Chancellor’s Budget
Columnists Allison Pearson and Liam Halligan pick apart the potentially penultimate budget and if it can help Sunak’s popularity"
Telegraph Planet Normal Podcast: 7th March 2023:
On the latest Planet Normal podcast, columnists Liam Halligan and Allison Pearson share their thoughts on Jeremy Hunt’s Budget and speak to Helen Thomas, former advisor to then Chancellor George Osborne.
Liam Halligan believes that the Conservatives are at the mercy of ‘unelected bureaucrats’ within the Office for Budget Responsibility and the Bank of England, and says, ‘the centrepiece of the Conservatives election strategy, to the extent they have one, is to try and get a succession of tax cuts in before the election.’
Allison Pearson is concerned about how much the Treasury relies on the OBR’s forecasts when it has been pointed out that ‘the average OBR forecasting error for the national debt, five years hence, is £415 billion.’
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