Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #budget2017
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Among reasons for opposing Brexit is UK's unpreparedness for such a huge change! Unless we stop this now, the purported benefits may be less than pre-sold? and the warned downsides may well be worse? If either or both? our public finances could implode under self-imposed strain.
Consider UK's low productivity relative to our G20 peers - well publicised but poorly understood? Improving 'this' over a sustained period would surely have been preferable pre-requisite prior to anything as profound as Brexit!
Look at UK's ballooning national debt, which has 'more than quadrupled' since John Major left office in 1997. Ask any ordinary Jo if they'd fancy racking up such a huge mortgage? (ours is £2 trillion) before resigning a job to venture into business on their own!
Thread: The stats behind the #Budget2017 spin. GDP revised down by an average of 0.4% a year. Earnings growth revised down by an average of 0.5% every year. Productivity growth revised down by an average of 0.7% a year. 1/
Why the downgrades? This is from OBR: "The fall in the pound that followed the EU referendum has pushed up consumer price inflation and squeezed households' real incomes and spending" 2/
Also from the OBR: "Sterling's fall has seen inflation pick up more rapidly in the UK than in the other major economies, contributing to weaker real growth" 3/
