Politicians shoot themselves in the foot so often these days that you might think they enjoyed it.
As Chancellor George Osborne sweats away at next month’s Budget, he must regret the decision, soon after he came into office, to set up a watchdog to oversee his own plans. So far he is the only man it has bitten.
The supposed value of the so-called Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) is — or was — that it was independent of the Treasury, independent of the Chancellor, independent of the Bank of England, in fact the last word in independence. This supposedly meant it could be trusted.
It was also staffed by highly qualified economists who, together with an Oversight Board, would make sure that there was no monkeying around with taxpayers’ money as there had been during Labour’s era of power.
In short, the OBR wields immense power and influence — though 99 per cent of the population would be hard pressed to say what the initials stood for or whether it mattered.
Having launched the organisation with a great fanfare, Osborne has had little choice but to work within its predictions. But these have proved consistently wrong. And, worse, consistently in the wrong direction.
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The OBR is still forecasting growth after last year’s ignominious zero — which it originally predicted would hit nearly 3 per cent!
The OBR’s crystal ball now recognises that we have hit a slow patch. But we shall resume growth soon — 2 per cent next year and nearly 3 per cent after that. Boom times lie ahead, if only you will wait a bit.
We shall see. Osborne has been obliged twice to push back the year in which we genuinely start to reduce the awesome public debt. Will he have to again next month?
If anything, the OBR provides the lesson that top economists are no wiser in making predictions than the man next to you in the saloon bar.
And what a waste of paper! The OBR’s regular forecast is nearly 200 pages long, packed with charts and graphs. The retrospective evaluation of what had actually happened is a further 90 pages. Then there is the study ‘Fiscal Sustainability’ — another 159 pages.
And to make sure the OBR is doing a decent job there is the Oversight Board, also fearfully independent — more trees at risk.
The painful truth is we are in a prolonged and desperate recession. And we will remain so until our eurozone trading partners sort out their horrendous problems. Underrating this, it is widely agreed in the trade, helped promote the forecasting error.
No doubt the OBR, as an important body in Whitehall, thought it would be politically wrong to scoff at our European friends. So much for independence.
Wily Wilson’s weaknessThe explanation for Harold Wilson’s disappearing pipe is at least no surprise. The BBC in its propagandist mood thought it would be wrong to show him happily puffing away in a tribute to mark 50 years since he became Labour leader.
It might seduce some viewers into underrating the menace of tobacco.
The Corporation explains, in its self-righteous way, that nothing from the archive has been ‘cut’.
Harold Wilson's famous pipe was noticeably absent from the recent BBC documentary about him, 50 years after he became Labour leaderPerhaps not. But you only need to be very selective about what you use to get the same effect.
Pipe smoking is a ruminative business. It can make the smoker look a genial, avuncular figure. In a politician, it also buys time when faced with a difficult questioner, and the wily Wilson used that to great advantage.
In winning four elections, he is accounted as one of the cleverest of our prime ministers. But any claim to brainpower or originality stops there.
Harold Wilson, seen here with wife Mary on Westminster Bridge in 1974, won four elections for LabourHe was a very — sometimes absurdly — old-fashioned figure. He carried forward all the faults of the past: fixed exchange rates for the pound, trying to stop inflation by pleading with the unions, running nationalised giants at huge losses, subsidising absolute stinkers if votes might be at risk, always resistant to real change.
Home/Wilson/Heath — they were all captives of the past. Admittedly Wilson agreed to a single overdue devaluation of sterling in 1967 and has got it in the neck ever since for saying the pound in people’s pocket or purse had not suddenly lost 14 per cent of its purchasing power. But he was, of course, right.
There is an interesting similarity between Wilson and David Cameron. The atmosphere during the Wilson regime was one of continual economic crisis. But he would continue to dominate the Commons with an air of authority, which was repeated weekly. It got him through.
For me, the great moment of his period came when he was promising at a Labour rally some new benefit or other. He added so memorably: ‘This is not a lightly given promise but a pledge.’
As a means of conveying the essential weakness of the politician, it could hardly be beaten.
As for the BBC’s propagandist mode, it never changes. Whenever a financial cut is proposed, however essential it may be to reducing the nation’s massive debt, the news department gets out its familiar agenda.
The instruction is to go out and find potential interviewees who will attract sympathy as victims when asked how badly he or she will be affected by the latest cut. Do you wonder that the Government finds it so hard to make economies?
