I did not get where I am today making forecasts about how the economy will perform in a new year. But I do feel it is my duty to emphasise the tangle into which this benighted government has got itself and us, and the connection between the three macroeconomic policy errors that have made us what we are – namely the “sick man of Europe”, with an economic performance worse than any other member of the G20 economies apart from Russia.
What prompted me to do this was a BBC Today programme last week, guest-edited by Dame Sharon White, chairman – her own preferred term – of the John Lewis Partnership. White took the opportunity to invite other economists to discuss the present UK economic malaise. What struck me was the way they agreed that, after the fiasco of the brief Truss-Kwarteng “fiscal event”, the prime macroeconomic objective of the UK – which in this case means the government and the Bank of England – was to restore “credibility”.
