Economics focus: Osborne buys time – but how much?

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18 December 2012
Card image David Smith Economics expert

George Osborne came through his Autumn Statement in better shape than most people expected. But the tough times are not over, David Smith writes.

Before his Autumn Statement on 5 December the consensus was that George Osborne was up against it and due for the biggest humiliation in his relatively short period as chancellor. Instead he emerged more or less intact and thanks to a cack-handed response by Ed Balls any humiliation was on the other side.

How did he get away with it and has he merely postponed the day of reckoning? The chancellor was forced to abandon one of his fiscal rules; public sector net debt will no longer be falling as a percentage of gross domestic product by the end of the parliament. Instead it will be...

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