At the risk of trying the patience of anyone who doesn't want to read two blogs in a row about the economy, George Osborne's critics have been annoying me again. To be clear, old Bumnose isn't my favourite politician either, but perhaps we should judge him relative to his detractors, who look muddled and blinkered. In particular they make three assumptions about the economy that don't bear examination.
The first is that growth is the only way of judging success or failure of economic policy. It's not. It would be good to have growth, but when we are dependent on the gilt markets just to survive from week to week it might be more important to persuade them that we are serious about getting on top of the deficit. Surely keeping our heads above water is the key?
It's possible to suggest, as Vicky Redwood from Capital Economics recently has, that you might lower the deficit more quickly in the medium term by borrowing more in the short term; but I've never heard her, or any of Osborne's less well-qualified critics, explain exactly how this mechanism works; and in fact Ed Balls seems rather to have given up the more-borrowing-equals-less-borrowing case.
You need to generate more in tax revenue and reduced welfare payments than you lose in the extra interest payments on borrowing right across the public and private sectors, and if it were easy to do, no government anywhere would ever have gone bust. All they'd need to do was borrow more.
The second assumption Osborne haters make is that out there growth is readily available. Actually I've never seen any suggestion, beyond the stimulus of the additional borrowing, where this growth is going to come from. In fact the evidence there is suggests that growth is going to be extremely hard to come by. Why? Because during the long years of boom (between 1993 and 2008) most of Britain's - extremely modest - growth came from the additional debt taken on by HMG, by house buyers and by consumers. All those sectors are now retrenching.
And yet on the left, the right and in the broadcast media commentators assume lazily that growth is there to be had. It doesn't seem to have occurred to them - or to the vast majority of the general public - that the main drivers of past growth might be exhausted. I want to get hold of them and give them a good shake. "Look at this week's manufacturing output", I imagine yelling at them. "The Eurozone is a basket case. America is emerging from recession only to face its own fiscal contraction. Who are we going to export to?" Criticising Osborne for failing to conjure any growth is a bit like having a go at an explorer for failing to find the Holy Grail.
Thirdly, the Chancellor's foes are guilty of a category error. They are assuming that our current economic woes are ones that George Osborne - or someone better at his job - could solve, now and without pain. I think they're wrong. Our problem belongs in the category of things not soluble in those terms, and possibly not soluble at all.
I think there's actually not much Osborne can do to make the economy grow, and the best he can hope for is to avoid doing something which we can be pretty sure would make things worse.
If you look at the range of advice and criticism the Chancellor is getting, from the Left (borrow more money) and the Right (cut welfare faster), from the Keynesians (borrow more money) and the Hayekites (improve the supply side), it's clear that Osborne's policy - hoping, like Mr Micawber, that something will turn up - is one among many potential alternatives. Given that no-one knows what is the right thing to do, he is as likely to be right as anyone else. Leave the guy alone.
