The government has helped destroy the OBR. It appears the Chancellor used their mistake in letting the budget document out early to get rid of the OBR chief. There had been stories that the Chancellor disliked the OBR cutting its forecast for productivity growth, and thought it was given too little credit in the forecasts for its so called growth initiatives. The OBR was right about both these matters.
The OBR has also been badly undermined by the Chancellor’s ludicrous fiscal rules. She made the main control to be state debt falling as a percentage of GDP in the fifth forecast year. No one can reliably forecast 2030-31 today. Who wins the next election? What is their spending and tax plan? Who replaces President Trump and what happens to US fiscal and trade policy? What will interest rates be? Will inflation be under control? How many migrants will be coming in and how many people on benefits? None of this can be easily predicted for 5 years out.
Markets need reassuring. That is best done by a Chancellor who is serious about controlling spending, unlike the present one. Borrowing this year and next is too high. The Conservatives are right to propose £47 bn of spending reductions now. We need fiscal rules to cut the deficit this Parliament, not waiting for possible cuts after the next election.
December 3, 2025
When I was growing up it was always the balance of payments that politicians and journalists seemed to care about. Now it’s the deficit.
December 3, 2025
The OBR had5yet to get a forecast right. It makes astrology look good. Why do we need an expensive left wing Quango to use a divining rod to guess future trends. We have hundreds working at the Treasury, just what is their job.
I don’t like lying Thieves but it would e no loss of the OBR was disbanded.
I see the capitulation to the CCP over building their spy and torture centre in central London has been postponed until 2TK visits China, no doubt so he can expect a heroes welcome.
December 3, 2025
I would advise everyone to read Trumps Thanksgiving speech. It details the horror of failed mass immigration policies in the West and he has solutions. Not something you’re likely to here from our spineless mob.
December 3, 2025
@Ian Wragg – in a nutshell we don’t. It was always the job of the Treasury managed by the Chancellor. Successive Chancellors as with a lot of Ministers, cant ‘manage’, don’t ‘manage’ they just like the title and are oblivious to the concept the job comes with responsibilities, responsibilities to the electorate, the taxpayer.
At the moment we have those in power spending ‘our’ money without looking for a return. As it stands today we don’t need the OBR, the Treasury, the Government or Parliament even
December 3, 2025
2TK is unbelievable – China is a ‘real national security threat to the United Kingdom’ — but we’ll let them build a mega embassy in a sensitive location anyway. How can anybody take this man seriously!?
We just have to hope there’s a GE before the land comes under ‘Chinese sovereignty’ , to stop it.
December 3, 2025
Plus the have effectively given (worse the given paid to give) Chagos to in effect China.
December 3, 2025
So looking at the Hillsborough report today 35 years late, I assume that by 2045 we might get some partial truth about the vast harms done by the Covid “vaccines” bu then.
December 3, 2025
Balance of Trade was a source of pride when we were still a manufacturing nation Stephen but then we joined the EU and it became an embarassment
December 3, 2025
That is because balance of payments provided cashflow for day to day running. Quantitative easing had not been invented by then and we needed to tax and trade to pay our bills rather than tax and borrow.
Banks creating money out of thin air to then lend to government and charge interest is a very odd financial arrangement.
December 3, 2025
They don’t dare mention the balance of payments any longer as they are so dire!
December 3, 2025
Dear Stephen Sharp, Conceptually, the golvernment deficit and the trade deficit are closely linked, both signs that we are spending more than we produce. But there are so many ifs and buts that they are best treated as separate issues. The economy would still be much healthier if they were both balanced.
December 3, 2025
Good morning
We all here have similar views on the OBR and what should be done with it, so I am not going to comment on the fate of one of its apparachiks.
When it comes to matters economic I find people like, Liam Halligan to be more enlightening. Currently he says that the Chancer has ‘backloaded’ on the borrowing she has made. In short, she has spiked the economy by borrowing today and setting tax rates for nearer the next election making it near impossible for any new government to cut taxes and recover the economy.
Such spite !
December 3, 2025
Future governments don’t need to accept her ‘commitments’.
She has raised spending. Period.
That will require even more harsh cuts to the State.
That too is good. The State needs to be cut to the bone.
December 3, 2025
she pushed a lot of the theoretical tax rises into the future after the next general election, when it will be the next government feeling the pain. its just a fantasy to make it look less of a mess up.
December 3, 2025
It was to prepare for a GE, standard practise.
But NO FUTURE GOVERNMENT needs to accept what she has ordained during their term.
She has no locus once she is out of office.
Everything this government and all past governments have done can be reversed.
It’s called Sovereignty.
December 3, 2025
One of my pension companies has told me it is no longer buying Government bonds.
December 3, 2025
At last!
December 3, 2025
Is there light at the end of the tunnel with the OBR in disgrace? Years of hopeless forecasts influencing government policy into mistakes might be finally coming to an end. By all means close it down, an organisation that only knows failure.
December 3, 2025
Politicians are responsible for running the finances of the Country, and the taxpayer, who has no say, simply picks up the tab for their dreams and mistakes.
No wonder we are in a mess with this set up !
December 3, 2025
The Labour government is out of control, driving the country into an even deeper hole than it is already in. The Chancellor needs to be held to account over her claims in her budget speech that she is reducing debt when she is increasing it. Forecasts five years out are meaningless as you point out. There are too many variables and too many unknown unknowns. What matters is the direction of travel and financing in the near term of one to two years. There needs to be sharp cuts in government spending coupled with small selective tax cuts and regulatory reliefs which will produce large economic gains and a parallel programme to cut government debt. Rinse and repeat the process in successive budgets. Over a parliamentary term that should offer the prospect of worthwhile improvements. A big bang approach would be nice but, faced with over 30,000 pages of tax regulations and over 400 quangos effectively beyond ministerial control, that does not seem a realistic proposition. Reforming the bloated, over mighty, inefficient British state is probably a job for at least two parliaments.
December 3, 2025
The problem is Sir John, not only does Rachel Reeves not know the state we will be in by 2030, the rest of the country is increasingly worried about what state they will be in by then too…
December 3, 2025
If I was senior in Government I would be able to tell you how many people would be on benefits and how many immigrants would be coming in Sir John and it would be a very low number.
December 3, 2025
A negative number I hope?
December 3, 2025
The pretence is the suggestion that clairvoyance really does know the future. The OBR is looking at the future that they can’t possibly know, as such just they should be reporting ‘if that then this’(its even a computer programming term IFTTT). The options and nothing else. That’s exactly what the UK Treasury is for, lay out IFTTT options and let the Minister chose the direction.
The Taxpayer gets to pay twice all because George Osborne wanted to shuffle the pack and remove himself from managing the Treasury, or his own decisions. The bit missed his department still did the recruiting, the hiring and firing and the diverting taxpayer money to the effort, The Chancellor, the Government and overseen by Parliament, its MPs, all still ‘own; the responsibility.
December 3, 2025
At least HSBC has seen it would be an error to follow the pundits on the appointment of its new Chairman.
December 3, 2025
Saw your excellent session on the Daily T podcast yesterday which I found it very educational, particularly your point about predicting deficits and anythoing beyond 2 years. Should be mandatory viewing by Reeves et al except I don’t believe financial prudence is their goal. Instead, I think they are trying to push the country beyond recovery … but for who’s benefit.
December 3, 2025
Best bet would be to limit the time any Chancellor can fix taxes and borrowing to one year at a time, then perhaps they may try and live within OUR means.
December 3, 2025
@Berkshire Alan – are you suggesting they should be managing a ‘budget’ in the same way they expect the ‘mere oik’ to do – so they can fund their give-aways.
Its often suggested that defence spending should be a percentage% of GDP, what would be crazy would be for every State department to have the same criteria.
December 3, 2025
That’s how it always was.
December 3, 2025
The ONS (Office for National Statistics) is in the same boat – a department created because a lazy Chancellor wanted to be removed from managing that same area of the treasury.
The ONS reports what has happened and is never correct, but they have the decency to add the provision to their T&C’s stating that as fact.
The theory for both these consumers of taxpayer money were needed so as to be outside the spear of political influence, impartial, as the Treasury that previously did the reporting was seen as a political body Which of course is nonsense. Any one appointed by Government and needing taxpayer money is owned by those doing the hiring firing and paying. They might just get separated from that situation if they were always 100% correct.
Then again it just need a Chancellor, a Government, and a Parliament prepared to manage and oversee the Treasury. There is a case the the head of the Treasury is appointed each time a new government is appointed it removes the pretence of impartiality that doesn’t exist
December 3, 2025
Well, someone had to go, and it’s looking like this shady government simply cannot afford to admit their own sins.
Our national debt is a tragedy and will only get worse as it explodes with future incompetent decisions. This labour administration just doesn’t have it in them to do what is right for the country, instead they plough on with their ideology, playing to their hardline MPs demanding a very big government and an even bigger set of benefits with which to bribe constituents in the labour heartlands.
At least the Tories had the good sense to wait until the final budget before an election before handing out sweeteners.
December 3, 2025
The government’s condemnation of the OBR is interesting from a couple of angles.
1. The Chancellor has repeatedly used the OBR as a stick to beat the Tory administration even claiming the bond market crisis during the brief Truss administration was because Kwarteng refused to heed the OBR’s advice?
2. The current Chancellor has championed the OBR as her prime advisor on the economy and the future forecast of the financial health of the nation.
With those clear foundations of interconnected Labour logic and OBR importance to their plans, it is revealing to say the least, that the OBR is now clearly undermining Rachel Reeves.
Maybe even the public sector are realising the days of endless free funding which sits at the core of Labour’s fiscal policy is dangerous and must be stopped.
Maybe the penny has finally dropped?
Perhaps they have realised? There is no such thing as ‘national’ growth, when state taxation is robbing peoples pocket, to simply increase State spending. That is not growth. That is plain old forced redistribution of wealth.
The wealth holders are leaving. After this latest budget I suspect Reeves will be too.
December 3, 2025
Labour has made it even more difficult for the next Government – as usual borrowings/ deficits reduces in the final year of the Parliament. Economic jam tomorrow meanwhile spend shed loads of money
December 3, 2025
It’s stranger than fiction. Years ago the Office of Budget Responsibility was created in order to prevent the Chancellor or Treasury from being irresponsible with the figures. Since then, the OBR has got its estimates wrong consistently. But at last it seems to have found a chief economist who is able to get the figures right and advised the Chancellor that she didn’t have to tax us to death. But she ignored him and used the money to bung billions to Labour voting big breeders. And unfortunately the OBR had a computer balks up at the same time and released the Budget figures just before she read them out, having spent the last 3 months hinting at what she was going to do. So at last the OBR has been put back in its box, to duplicate the Treasury and fiddle the figures.
December 3, 2025
Budget Responsibility is that of the First Lord of the Treasury, as it says on the brass of the door.
It is delegated to the Chancellor of the Exchquequer. Shriking responsibility off to another body that gets so much wrong and forecasts years ahead with about as much accuracy as Haruspex is a sham. Oppositions exist to hold the government to account. Cut out paying the middleman OBR as an added source of expensive nuisance.
The true yellow London Brick colour of Downing Street is besmirched with all the dense blackness of Victorian chimney soot with thicker layers of black paint in an ongoing cover up. Cleaning off that mess and using the money wasted on the near-worthless OBR would present a brighter image of UK governement and its economy to the World.
December 3, 2025
“Markets need reassuring. That is best done by a Chancellor who is serious about controlling spending, unlike the present one. Borrowing this year and next is too high.”
Since Labour are so low in the polls their current strategy is to spend, spend, spend. The logic is that either the spending enables them to stay in power or else it acts as a scorched earth policy for the next administration to handle. Net Zero acts as the perfect spending vehicle whilst at the same time destroying our energy, economy and national security. Net Zero is a Trojan Horse where the use of a false narrative that CO2 causes global warming is being employed to justify making us totally dependent upon China for our energy infrastructure, steel, vehicles, chemicals etc etc. The Chagos Islands giveaway, the collapsing spy trial and the mega embassy are just the initial consequences of a Net Zero policy designed to put us in the pocket of China. We’re told we must swap our reliance on petro states such as our own North Sea oil and gas or fracking, Norway, the US, Qatar and others (note the plurality of supply) for relying on just one state, China, a state that our security services have described as “hostile” for all our energy infrastructure. If Huawei were not allowed to supply our 5G telecoms equipment for security reasons how can it be safe to rely upon China for our energy infrastructure?
December 3, 2025
Some might say that the OBR has done the nation a great service in bringing these budget issues to light …..I still believe that the quango OBR is a complete waste of taxpayer money and should be disbanded
December 3, 2025
I remember Chancellors deriving budgets for the forthcoming year.
They had locus over that year.
I can’t remember which idiot had the temerity to budget for years into the future, even beyond the Parliament. He should have been sacked immediately.
December 3, 2025
It is a bit like saying with conviction ‘ we have taken steps to ensure we will win at least 2 Tests in Australia this time, we will win 3 tests the following visit and all 5 the visit after.’
Dreamland….
December 3, 2025
Quite so – and it was the Labour Party that was so put out because Liz Truss ignored the OBR – breathtaking Brass Neck by Starmer.
December 3, 2025
The point is that markets need to be able to understand the principles by which the Government operates. Usually, in more moderate times, business can work around most sets of pronciples in a British democracy. But when we have Starmer’s Gang, riddled as it is with Fabians, led by a Trotskyite and with a communist as Chancellor, and the whole gang being motivated by hatred of Britain, there is nowhere for business to go, except overseas. Nobody in their right mind would invest in or allow themselves to be dependent upon Britain.
December 3, 2025
Sir John
If some thought was to go into managing the UK, and Parliament if it was serious about anything including its own purpose would be using so-called AI for the mondaine tasks. The OBR, the ONS, and the BoE for starters could simply, be handed over to what is termed AI.
AI isn’t artificial, it isn’t intelligent, it simply a known set of data assembled in an easy-to-read format. The OBR even now works on reporting ‘if that then this’(IFTTT) – they are not clairvoyant, just best guesses on sets of directions. It’s a simply outcome that can be derived at by desktop AI, but as always the viewer decides. The OBR as with AI offers up scenarios, it is the Parliament of the day and its Government that then chooses the direction to take. It’s not the OBR or AI that chooses – it is Parliament with their Government and all those that enter that House that own the outcome. To blame others is to shirk your own purpose.
Similarly, with the ONS they just report on the data that is feed to them, the options how its is read(spun) is still in the eyes if the politicians running the show. That then flows through to the BoE, it is still run on ‘if that then this’(IFTTT) scenario that is constrained by the political diktat of 2% inflation, with all mistakes funded by the taxpayer. These are not independent authorities they are Parliament appointed individuals funded by the taxpayer, offering up options and scenarios.
Parliament has this century focused on what they can get away with throwing other people’s money at and not what the return to the taxpayer that money achieves. They, the MPs that inhabit that place some how think the hiring, firing and squandering our money ends once it is taken from the taxpayer.
December 3, 2025
when the national debt is 3 trillion, and you are planning to increase it by 650 billion over the next 5 years, the whole dancing around handbags about whether there is a few billions headroom to spend more or tax less is nonsense, it is complete trivia in the scheme of things. all the highly paid public sector people there to provide guidance are seemingly never ever going to tell any government they are borrowing too much, it will be left to market realities to make that clear way too late. lets hope we are not completely a third world country destroyed financially, destroyed by immigration of people who hate us, before somebody with sense gets a grip.
December 3, 2025
The OBR forecasts are a joke! It is a Quango that could easily be shut down and save some money. But that does not excuse the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, who lied to us about the UK’s financial position over several months.
Then, raised taxes to pay for even more benefits for the unproductive part of the economy. See YouTube for people who boast about their lifestyle on benefits. The UK economy is now in a doom loop, which will end in disaster. The Government spending cart is fast becoming too heavy for the private sector horse to pull!
Starmer and Reeves are both a disgrace, utterly unfit for office. Neither of them knows the difference between telling the truth and lying. If this were a Conservative Government, the media would be demanding both to resign.
December 3, 2025
@Keith from Leeds – the media has found something else that just happened to crawl-out of the woodwork today
Billions in green subsidies to be added to household bills. The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) revealed in its latest economic assessment that £1bn a year will be added to household energy bills to fund Ed Miliband’s next auction for renewables projects.
These costs of £1bn a year to fund renewables projects were not outlined in the Chancellor’s Budget
More taxs rises ‘hip, hip hooray’
December 3, 2025
Hypocritical Labour always enjoyed the OBR a operate with wonky forecasts for years that has a track record of failures and critical of the Conservative plans yet when they shine the spotlights on Labour’s budgets they don’t like it and blame the OBR and everyone & his dog instead of them taking responsibility and accountability like banana republics.
How pathetic and no wonder the likes of Putin, the EU, China and Trump know Britain is weak, has weak leadership.
The only thing holding Labour’s cabinet together is their free suits etc.
December 3, 2025
To be fair the OBR has helped destroy itself by being unable to reliably make predictions a few months ahead never mind years ahead. Get rid.
December 3, 2025
2TK today
“We have to keep moving towards a closer relationship with the EU.
“And we will have to be grown-up about that, to accept that this will require trade-offs. That applies to our trading relations across the world.”
In plain English screw the World the UK’s destination is under the unelected, unaccountable EU
December 3, 2025
The full article – https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/12/01/starmer-claims-to-tackling-britain-problems-why-he-is-wrong/
December 3, 2025
Am afraid we went too far with Brexit – had we stayed in we would have had oversight from the EU and avoided all of this back biting with the ORB.. but too late now
Reply More badly informed Remain nonsense. The body I think you mean is the OBR.Being in EU would not have avoided a spat between Chancellor and OBR. All those years of EU supervision and policy gave us the ERM crash and recession in 1990-2, and the banking crash and Great recession of 2008.
December 3, 2025
Dear Sir John, Debt as a percentage of GDP rises if net government borrowing as a share of GDP is higher than the rate of growth. A quick reading of the OBR report suggests that, if correct, this happens every year of its 5 year forecast. The only reason that the Chancellor can claim that debt/GDP stabilises and edges down at the end is because inflation reduces the relative value of the debt. Helpfully, from the Chancellor’s point of view, inflation is now forecast to be slightly higher than previously expected. It would clearly suit the Government if CPI inflation averages 3 per cent rather than the 2 per cent target and the Bank of England cooperates .