A budget for growth? Sorry, pull the other one. Below the spin, even the official forecasts are laden with gloom. Funnily enough, it is 50 years since one of Jeremy Hunt’s chancellarial predecessors, Tony Barber, produced a “budget for growth” that really worked – indeed, rather too well. It resulted in the “Barber boom”, when gross domestic product rose by some 6% in real, adjusted-for-inflation, terms in one year.
They don’t come like that any more, which is just as well, because the Barber boom ended in tears. (In truth it was the Heath boom, because the prime minister was really in charge.)
