Our manufacturing base is too small, having fallen from 27 per cent of economic output in 1970, to 17.4 per cent in 1990, to less than ten per cent today. Whatever the success of London and the South East, some of the poorest places in Northern Europe can be found here. And following the introduction of the super-deduction tax change nearly three years ago, investment is growing at the second highest rate in the G7.īut our structural weaknesses and longer-term challenges are clear. ![]() Our creative industries are growing at twice the rate of the economy overall. We have the largest life sciences sector in Europe, which produced a Covid vaccine that saved six million lives and a treatment that saved a million more. We are the world’s third trillion-dollar tech economy after only the US and China. London is one of the richest cities on Earth, and alongside New York the City remains one of the two world centres of global finance. The UK is the sixth biggest economy in the world. More than that, he has to tell a broader story – of Britain’s economic strengths and weaknesses, of the world around us, of the events of the last five years, and of the future we can have if we follow his plan.Īmid the reams of papers produced examining our economic difficulties, we sometimes neglect our strengths. ![]() The choices we face reflect our circumstances, and the choices we make reflect our values, interests and understanding of the world.Ĭonservative chancellors will therefore make different decisions to Labour chancellors, and it will be perfectly reasonable for Jeremy Hunt to draw out this week the contrasts between the Tories and Labour. The idea that we can reach optimal outcomes if only we put the right data into the right impact assessment is commonplace among officials and wonks, but it is completely wrong. ![]() Politics – that much maligned art – only really stands for the representation of competing values and interests. For even the most technocratic budget would be met with political scrutiny from the Opposition, MPs and the media. This is true regardless of the Chancellor or party in government. All budgets are political, and budgets in an election year are especially political.
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