Recovery planned?
- 2 Sep 08, 06:42 PM
This was not the much hailed government economic recovery plan. It will not affect whether the OECD was right today to predict a recession by the year's end. It will, therefore, disappoint those who thought that that was what ministers had spent the summer working up.
Downing Street insists that the talk of an economic plan never came from them. The intention of today's announcements was, they say, simply to target support on those who need help. Behind the scenes the government is struggling to persuade energy companies to fund another package to help the poorest pay their fuel bills and to help everyone to cut theirs by using energy more efficiently.
The chancellor is well aware that the impact of any of these measures could be dwarfed by the impact of economic challenges which he famously said were "arguably the worst in 60 years". He went out of his way today to make clear that he was not saying that we were living through times that were worse than the recessions of the 70s, early 80s and 90s, let alone the Great Depression. It will not be until next month's pre-Budget report that we learn how bad his forecasts are or what changes in economic policy he'll announce in response.
What about the future of Alistair Darling himself? My instinct is that he is now, rather curiously, safer than before his infamous interview.
