Pre-Budget report 2006 - Comment
Resources
No 10’s PR machine goes into overdrive
Franctic efforts by spin doctors to control the day’s news saw Brown hit the broadcast studios at an early hour
Outcome brighter than the billing
When it comes to forecasting the economy, Gordon Brown’s brooding exterior masks a sunny optimism. Time and again, he has offered a bright outlook only to come out with downgrades and forecasts of better times.
Parting shot for the tax-thrifty
Gordon Brown is leaving the building. That much was clear from a speech that marked his disengagement from micro-managing businesses and his growing interest in micro-managing the lives of ordinary Britons, writes Jonathan Guthrie.
Outlook darker than Brown’s rosy rhetoric
Gordon Brown’s carefully selected statistics do not tell the whole story about the UK economy, and Britain still lags behind the US and many European countries in terms of productivity growth.
Editorial comment: The micro-manager of UK plc
Gordon Brown’s pre-budget report on Wednesday was not just his last, but the last of its kind. The chancellor will almost certainly be prime minister by this time next year.
Relentless interventionist strikes again
Mr Brown would not be Mr Brown if he looked back on his labours and rested. He cannot see a problem without wishing to solve it. He is a puritan who knows no sabbath, writes Martin Wolf.
Philip Stephens: A serious contest still lies ahead
The chancellor sounded as if he intends to direct our lives from the womb (the new starting point for payment of child tax credit) to the grave, writes Philip Stephens.
Chris Giles: How Treasury got its forecasts wrong
Far from reporting tax cuts and lower borrowing Gordon Brown had to raise duty, writes Chris Giles, the FT’s economics editor
UK fiscal policy network needs to be less opaque
The UK’s monetary and fiscal framework has served its purpose well. Complacency would be foolish, though, and now is the time to look at adaptations required for what may well be a rougher decade ahead, writes Vincent Cable, Liberal Democrat shadow chancellor.
Do not bow down before the famous on copyright
On Wednesday, Andrew Gowers, former editor of this paper, will release a report commissioned by Gordon Brown, chancellor of the exchequer, to examine the UK’s intellectual property framework, writes Lawrence Lessig of Stanford Law School.
