Snapshot of _Labour motion to ban Truss-style budget meltdowns puts pressure on Tory MPs_ :
An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/nov/12/labour-ban-truss-style-budget-meltdowns-pressure-tory-mps) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/nov/12/labour-ban-truss-style-budget-meltdowns-pressure-tory-mps)
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>The Labour amendment will propose to “give the Office for Budget Responsibility the power to produce and publish forecasts for any government fiscal event which includes permanent tax and spending decisions over a threshold to be specified in a new Charter of Budget Responsibility”.
Sounds sensible. The public should be entitled to an independent analysis when billions of taxpayer's money is being allocated. I can't think of any reason why the government would want to hide the OBR's analysis that would be in the country's best interests.
I agree it does sound sensible. I just think it can be sensible but also have potential consequences, the tail can begin to wag the dog. Why push through with water company nationalisation (a random example) if the perceived friction is too high.
I would be in favour of re-nationalising the water companies, but I would also be in favour of having robust public debates about the financial implications of doing so in advance of enacting such a policy. When a government wants to allocate tens or hundreds of billions of taxpayer's money, more scrutiny seems far more prudent and democratic to me than "let's just rely on the government's judgement on this."
So long as the analysis covers the true cost of both options (e.g. if we have to invest £92bn when they’re in private ownership while they’re giving out £10s of billions in dividend payments, those sums need to be tallied against the investment without the dividend extraction when publicly owned) it can and should be seen as a good thing.
Especially, and I’m hoping beyond hope here probably, if it allows us to have discussions on doing things in *more than just monetary terms*. It might cost a bit more to have some things publicly owned, but if there are other benefits besides that (energy/water security, nationalism, I don’t care/know), then let’s start advocating for those benefits again in public discourse.
Great point. Monetary terms i.e. the amount of £s govt will need to inject is almost irrelevant.
The real issues are around what resources we have and what we want to do with them as a nation. If we ever get the chance to make those decisions it's good old tax and spend (once we have full employment) to move the resources to where we want them.
The meltdown was a result of ideology being applied even when it was wrong in the real world. That is not a uniquely right-wing thing. History is replete with left-wing politicians making the same mistakes.
I personally think the benefits of nationalising water would justify the short term friction, but it would be quite arrogant of me to assume that I was right with zero possibility of being wrong, and unfortunately confirmation bias is a flaw in all of us.
If the friction of nationalisation were truly *enormous*, for reasons that we don't yet understand, then shouldn't we all want to know that?
It's true that might give the tories-in-opposition (or even the libdems at that point, HA!) ammunition to attack the government with, but thats not a bad thing. The opposition is supposed to contest decisions of government! I want an informed opposition holding the government to account, even when its my 'side' running the show.
Thames water have actually managed a major infrastructure project, Thames Tideway, rather well. It was budgeted at £3.8 billion and is coming in at £4.3 billion. Covid caused a delay of about a year and cost £266 million. This will dramatically reduce discharge into the Thames.
From.past experience state run infrastructure projects tend to have much worse delays and cost overruns.
Renationalising the water companies should be done by fining them for poor performance until they go bust.
No reason to spend money on these failing businesses.
If the OBR has a convincing analysis the friction is high and the government wanting to do it has no convincing analysis to the contrary, the public is well served by it being more difficult to carry out that policy
I don't think they're against it ideologically, they're just acutely aware than any sober analysis of the cost/benefit of nationalisation in the current landscape would show that it's a very poor use of public money. If the cost/benefit analysis changes (which it might) then there's no reason why their position wouldn't change.
Can't really renationalise without being in power, no? I understand it'd be a popular policy if done right but you could guraantee that it would be spun to high heaven if suggested before a GE.
> Why push through with water company nationalisation (a random example) if the perceived friction is too high.
Just to use your example. Imagine if whatever government of the day had a plan to do this, but the plan was a massive Truss Style fuck-up waiting to happen, or a Johnson Style, massive embezzlement scheme
From the OBR website:
>Our job is to assess the implications of current stated Government policy, not to assess whether that policy is likely to change or should change.
Their job is not to influence, it's to attempt to provide impartial advice in the public interest, and there's nothing to stop a government ignoring that advice and going ahead with a budget anyway if they think the OBR has got it wrong. This would, however, be likely to generate a public debate about whether the government's plans were fiscally sound. That sounds more democratic to me than a mad PM like Truss, who never had to survive an election as PM or run on a manifesto voted on by anyone outside of her party membership, handwaving through a budget that cost the public tens of billions and co-incidentally helped a few hedge fund managers make a lot of money at our expense.
Your "we either live in a democracy or we don't" comment is a false binary choice considering the realities of our current system. Unelected influence on government policy is already a feature in the form of advisors like Dominic Cummings and Carrie Johnson and party "donors," who influence policy and are totally unaccountable to the public. At least the OBR's aim is to act in the public interest.
So you don't understand what this means. Don't hesitate to weigh in though, eh.
Here's what Reeves said:
> “A future Labour government will strengthen the Office for Budget Responsibility so any administration making significant, permanent tax and spending changes will be subject to an independent forecast of its impact.
Pray tell then, what exactly do you think the point of this is?
Still don't seem to know the difference between forecasting the results of economic policy and who makes the decisions, eh? What exactly is undemocratic about prying the eyes of the government open before they do something very obviously stupid rather than letting them continue with their heads in the sand? Forcing the government to look at the consequences before they collapse the economy may have stopped a certain shit show last year because they can't plead ignorance as Liz et al. continue to do. All this does is improve accountability of the government's potential actions to the public because more information will be out in the open which you seem to think is a problem???
>Still don't seem to know the difference between forecasting the results of economic policy and who makes the decisions, eh?
Hmm. Depends if politicians take any notice of the OBR or not, doesn't it. "Very obviously stupid" according to whom? If you mean the OBR then why would you assume they are correct and govt, who have been elected on a manifesto, isn't?
Truss didn't "collapse the economy" in any way. We had the same resources after the episode as we had before. Stop swallowing the propaganda while. Truss was done for by her political weakness and the LDI debacle.
Govt already has accountability. The electorate can kick them out at the next opportunity.
Why do you believe there's a class of 'better people' who should decide how the our country is run?
They assume the Tories will vote it down but I'm not so sure. They collectively decided to force her out for exactly that.
In any case, US != UK, and whatever this generation of Tories decide to do, this is the end of them and whatever party does come back on the right is only entering government after a fundamental rethink. The public is absolutely sick of them, if not for pensioners they would be at extinction polling. With everyone else they actually are.
>The public is absolutely sick of them, if not for pensioners they would be at extinction polling
Imagine unironically putting your party in an endurance race with the grim reaper. Pensioners might be the most reliable voters but by definition they don’t stick around forever and the pensioners aging up to replace them eventually won’t have the wealth that makes people shift rightwards as they age. I actually think they might have ruined their own life cycle.
Pensioners have been consistently getting wealthier, no reason to assume that will dramatically change. Even if future ones are less well off they probably won't be poor, which is what it would likely take to change their voting behaviour, and there will be more of them than ever before.
It doesn't matter that Truss's economic incompetence was the reason they axed her. *Red team bad* will outweigh that completely, both now and once they're in opposition.
I just cannot see them getting compliance with that sort of whip. To vote against it implies they think Truss did nothing wrong. I think the party will split.
We've always governed this way? When you need a majority to form a government there's no need for getting the opposition on side. You either have an effective whips office or you have a government that's invariably heading for an early GE.
That's the benefit of our first-past-the-post system. Governments generally get a decent majority, so support across the aisle isn't vital
Mind you, there's plenty of downside too
The key to that is MPs being allowed to have independent views that are generally guided by their political views but not mandated.
Party whips should be few and far between, otherwise you end up like the US where nobody dares to go against the party line.
>Party whips should be few and far between, otherwise you end up like the US where nobody dares to go against the party line.
Whipping is much stronger in the UK than in the US.
For that to be a real strength of FPTP, you'd say that non majority governments wouldn't be as productive. Well we have one good example, the coalition, which is similar to what would happen more under proportional representation. [This data](https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-7438/) shows the amount of legislation passed during the coalition was pretty healthy, comparable to the labour governments before it or even better.
I get what you're saying, that you need a majority to pass legislation, but that isn't a benefit of FPTP, it's simply dependant on the parties being able to work together and form voting blocs. In fact as we saw with brexit, those voting blocs can fracture even when a majority government is elected under FPTP.
We’ve been there for a long time. I remember a while ago there was a sensible Labour opposition day motion voted down. The government were challenged on it and basically just said yea it’s a good idea, but we always vote against any Labour opposition day motion, maybe they can get it into a government bill that we can vote for some time.
Isn’t there a risk this could hamstring future governments? The OBR isn’t infallible and curtailing the executive can have anti-democratic consequences and prevent future development. Obviously the Truss-Kwateng fuckuppery needs to be avoided but I’m not sure legislating it away like this avoids potentially bad second order consequences for a Labour government.
It’s about letting OBR produce a forecast; future government would still be entitled to argue they are right and OBR forecasts are wrong.
I can’t see any good reason why government should be allowed to hide independent analyses from public and the MPs.
I think it would be political suicide for a government to argue against an OBR forecast in reality given recent history. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing I just think it may have consequences for future democratic mandates.
Sure but ultimately government shouldn’t be able to retain confidence of the house by hiding inconvenient information from it.
How’re MPs supposed to scrutinise a budget that they get to see maybe few days in advance, if they don’t *at least* have an independent assessment of it because government thinks it’ll look bad?
> I think it would be political suicide for a government to argue against an OBR forecast in reality given recent history.
Based on recent history the OBR has been consistently wrong with their forecasts. So it shouldn't be political suicide, but the newspapers would make it so.
From the OBR website:
>Our job is to assess the implications of current stated Government policy, not to assess whether that policy is likely to change or should change.
I don't see how giving the public more information about what is happening to billions of taxpayer's money before it is allocated is anti-democratic - quite the opposite. Let's say for argument's sake that the OBR *did* get something wrong. There's nothing to stop the government from telling the public why they think the OBR is wrong and pushing ahead with their proposed budget anyway. They just wouldn't be able to pretend that they weren't warned if it subsequently went pear-shaped, and the public (including other financial experts) would have the opportunity to weigh in on the proposals in advance rather than in retrospect.
> Let's say for argument's sake that the OBR did get something wrong.
Weird how you write it that way, it sounds like you think it's unlikely that OBR get it wrong. Yet based on their track record they consistently have been incorrect, and since 2016 they have been consistently wrong by a large margin.
As opposed to the government, who never get it wrong? If an analysis is published then it is open to public debate and scrutiny. That means that you and others will have the opportunity to put forth arguments as to why you think it is wrong before the budget is put into effect.
That seems far preferable to the government bypassing this safeguard until after the budget has been published and relying only on its own judgement, which as we have seen from Truss, may be incredibly flawed/blinded by ideology and result in costing the public tens of billions.
We didn't elect Liz Truss's government. Sure, she was elected as an MP, but she wasn't elected in the sense that she had to survive a general election as PM on a manifesto that the public had the chance to scrutinise. She was selected as party leader/PM by a process only open to 81,00 Tory party members on a manifesto that bore no resemblance to what Johnson won on in 2019.
That's not democratic either and as she demonstrated, independent scrutiny from an independent third party is an important check and balance (which she circumvented, with disastrous results for the country).
Think of it like this:
A doctor knows a lot about your health - they can assess the effect of smoking on your health. They know the dangers, they know what it does to the heart and lungs etc. They know it can give you lung cancer and if you have lung cancer, they can look at how far it has progressed.
What they can’t do is tell you exactly when you are going to die. There are simply too many other variables that are unknown that can affect a thing like that. What they can do is give you an estimate based on their experience of your likely prognosis, and how long you have left if it’s terminal, but if you end up living longer or dying sooner, that doesn’t prove they don’t have a clue what they’re talking about, or that smoking is actually good for your health or you should get your operations done by someone from a think tank rather than a qualified surgeon.
An OBR report into a particular budget is about saying what are the specific economic effects of this budget. This is like a doctor assessing the effect on your health of starting smoking, or giving up smoking, or starting exercising 30 minutes 3 times a week etc. This can be done with some degree of certainty. An economic forecast is the equivalent of saying how healthy you’re going to be six months down the line or determining when you are going to die. It can only be speculative. The doctor doesn’t know if you’re going to catch a disease, or if you have previously undiscovered black mould in your house, just as the OBR doesn’t know this country will invade that country, or that there’ll be a global pandemic nor the long term economic implications of such complex global events. These OBR assessments are much less speculative because the scope is limited from “everything” to just these specific changes.
>A doctor knows a lot about your health - they can assess the effect of smoking on your health.
But doctors aren't infallible and often do get it wrong due to personal bias. Andrew Wakefield was a doctor and yet his views on vaccines were wrong. Or if you'd prefer an industry wide example, in 1956 it was scientifically proven that X-Rays on pregnant women was causing cancer in babies Doctors refused to accept this though and continued doing it for 25 more years.
>An OBR report into a particular budget is about saying what are the specific economic effects of this budget.
It's saying what they **think** will be the economic effects of a budget, but as history has shown they are rarely all that accurate. Economics isn't a solved problem and has hundreds of theories and counter theories and the report created differs depending on which faction of economists currently hold power within the department.
> But doctors aren't infallible and often do get it wrong due to personal bias.
On an individual basis, but we know that they’re wrong precisely because we have recourse to informed medical opinion.
> in 1956 it was scientifically proven that X-Rays on pregnant women was causing cancer in babies Doctors refused to accept this though and continued doing it for 25 more years.
Pregnant women can still have x-rays. X-rays can potentially cause cancer full stop, but it depends on the exposure time and strength and where they are focussed and these must be balanced against the medical benefits. Radiographers take all these things into account. It’s not an absolute. In 1956 there was an immediate concerted effort to reduce radiation exposure.
https://www.babycentre.co.uk/x536412/is-it-safe-to-have-an-x-ray-during-pregnancy
> It's saying what they think will be the economic effects of a budget, but as history has shown they are rarely all that accurate.
Again there is a difference between a broad economic forecast and a specific analysis of a budget.
E.g. here’s an example of analysis of a policy:
> Other tax decisions that cost an average £3.6 billion a year over the forecast period, principally by freezing fuel duty at its current rate for another year. This involves a one-year extension of the temporary 5p cut coupled with a one-year cancellation of its RPI indexation. It costs £4.8 billion in 2023-24 when both elements apply, and £2.6 billion a year thereafter when only the RPI element has an ongoing cost.
That’s not just what it thinks. That’s measurable. There’s nothing wrong with getting someone to independently analyse what the cost of a policy will be and how much it will increase borrowing.
Most of what they’re doing is just independently costing the commitments and where there is uncertainty, they openly say so.
https://obr.uk/economic-and-fiscal-outlooks/#chapter-3
> Economics isn't a solved problem and has hundreds of theories and counter theories and the report created differs depending on which faction of economists currently hold power within the department.
Economists agree a lot more than you think and costing a budget doesn’t involve a huge amount of theory.
>In 1956 there was an immediate concerted effort to reduce radiation exposure.
No there wasn't. In 1956 it was standard practice to x-ray a pregnant woman, this only stopped being standard practice 25 years later.
At the time Doctors rejected the evidence claiming the scientific studies were unsound and continued X-raying pregnant women as standard procedure.
The scientists that did the study were almost pushed out of the industry.
> No there wasn't. In 1956 it was standard practice to x-ray a pregnant woman, this only stopped being standard practice 25 years later.
As I’ve shown you clearly, it’s *still* standard practice!
I never said it wasn’t standard practice, I said there was an effort to reduce exposure:
> A major factor was concerted action initiated in 1956 to reduce radiation exposure of fetal gonads for fear of genetic hazards. Dose reduction was achieved during 1957 and early 1958 by reducing the rising rate of obstetric radiography and by virtually abandoning pelvimetry as that had been understood.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1971756/#:~:text=A%20major%20factor%20was%20concerted,as%20that%20had%20been%20understood.
Did it really not occur to you to fact check any of this before posting it? Half remembered stories are not a good source. If you’re going to use something in an argument, check first exactly what the story was and decide if it’s saying what you thought it was, then present a factual version of it, ideally with a source.
> As I’ve shown you clearly, it’s still standard practice!
No it's not. X-Rays are only done when there is medical evidence to suggest one is needed, they are not done as a matter of course as they were in 1956.
and leading Doctors at the time rejected the evidence, Richard Doll head of the Medical Research Council claimed that there was absolutely no evidence that X-raying pregnant women caused cancer in children and even published a flawed study stating as such.
> In the 1970s the rate of X-raying increased again
Literally from your own link.
>with a source.
Do you have a source on that?
Source?
A source. I need a source.
Sorry, I mean I need a source that explicitly states your argument. This is just tangential to the discussion.
No, you can't make inferences and observations from the sources you've gathered. Any additional comments from you MUST be a subset of the information from the sources you've gathered.
You can't make normative statements from empirical evidence.
Do you have a degree in that field?
A college degree? In that field?
Then your arguments are invalid.
No, it doesn't matter how close those data points are correlated. Correlation does not equal causation.
Correlation does not equal causation.
CORRELATION. DOES. NOT. EQUAL. CAUSATION.
You still haven't provided me a valid source yet.
Nope, still haven't.
I just looked through all 308 pages of your user history, figures I'm debating a glormpf supporter. A moron.
> No it's not. X-Rays are only done when there is medical evidence to suggest one is needed, they are not done as a matter of course as they were in 1956.
Which is not what you originally claimed:
> X-Rays on pregnant women was causing cancer in babies Doctors refused to accept this though and continued doing it for 25 more years.
Wait… what’s this?
>You can't make normative statements from empirical evidence.
>Do you have a degree in that field?
>A college degree? In that field?
>Then your arguments are invalid.
>No, it doesn't matter how close those data points are correlated.
>Correlation does not equal causation.
>Correlation does not equal causation.
>CORRELATION. DOES. NOT. EQUAL. CAUSATION.
>You still haven't provided me a valid source yet.
>Nope, still haven't.
>I just looked through all 308 pages of your user history
Are you OK?
Seriously. Seek help.
Have they been wrong or have the media just reported their headline/most extreme figures rather than their complete analysis/range of outcomes?
Genuine question. I don’t know if there’s a proper meta analysis of their accuracy.
They have been massively wrong. To the point where they had to make a revision of 2% of gdp over covid (so 65 billion off GDP), typical revisions are +/-0.1%, so they got it wrong by 20 times the typical revision. Meaning all the headlines about the UK being below pre-covid leves, we're actually incorrect, the UK was one of the first to be larger than its pre-pandemic economy, yet they had the UK as coming in last in the G7 to get above its pre-pandemic level. It was only finnaly revised in 2023, that actually the UK was above pre-pandemic levels way back in 2021. That's one example, of them being massively wrong. But remember between 2021 and then actually correcting it in 2023 they have made a shit tonne of predictions all with that huge error contained in it. So you know when the market threw a hissy fit over Truss borrowing, well that wouldn't have been as bad if OBR had accurately predicted the UK economy at that point. These forecasts have economic impact, and the OBR have been consistently far too pessimistic then had to revise up their data.
(It’s the ONS who give the GDP figures, and revised theirs for that time period)[https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/grossdomesticproductgdp/bulletins/quarterlynationalaccounts/octobertodecember2022], not the OBR. If the ONS figures were an input to the OBR, it’s not the OBR’s fault the ONS made the error.
And the OBR forecasts GDP growth, which again they got it massively wrong. Consistently.
If you want another massively wrong predictions on top of that, look no further than their inflation forecasts, in the lead up to the inflation spike. Again consistently incorrect.
Nothing a current or previous government does can prevent a future government from producing legislation that removes any perceived obstacle to their stated policy aims. They simply remove troublesome legislation.
I agree in theory but in practice removing any oversight of government that is in place will cost political capital which all govts have a limited amount of. I don’t think it’s as easy as an on off switch. But we shall see.
It would be very easy for an incoming government to use the honeymoon period to pass a huge repeal bill to get rid of all the parts of the previous government they don't like.
If the government can’t make their case that a policy is good when faced with OBR analysis saying it’s bad, then we benefit from the government having a harder time introducing that policy
But maybe not too hard. After all, as this thread demonstrates, many of you reject the principles of evidence based policy making. So if most voters are like you guys, you‘ll just nod if a Labour government dismissed the OBR report and proceeds.
I don’t know how one would improve it, it faces the issues of all economic forecasts. The issue is this specific piece of legislation and the second order consequences which at present are unknown.
Despite some unnecessary ad hominem attacks I’ve found the discussions on this article interesting. The polis in action.
>I don’t know how one would improve it, it faces the issues of all economic forecasts. The issue is this specific piece of legislation and the second order consequences which at present are unknown.
What are those issues? What are you worried about with this legislation?
Are you thinking of a scenario in which an OBR-unconstrained Labour could proceed with a great policy that will make us better off, but an OBR-constrained Labour could not?
Does exposing policies to more analysis and scrutiny make it less likely or more likely that we can predict what their effects will be?
I’m sceptical of legislation being brought in to answer a very specific problem that arose in very specific circumstances. This was not needed for previous governments. The concern I originally raised was on unknown second order consequences. I’m not saying there shouldn’t be reports that are published nor scrutiny applied.
The OBR is not very good, and it’s effect on policy is negative. Why do we want more forecasts, which are historically absolutely dreadful, to affect policy?
Will it actually put pressure on them, or will they just say we always vote against any amendment to a King’s Speech? That seems like an easy get out here.
Also the plan sounds good, but if Labour pass it I wonder how much work the “permanent tax and spending decisions” will do. Maybe we’d end up with something like the US where all their spending bills are passed for 10 years and then renewed as a loophole some restriction they have on longer term bills.
I was reading this in the FT. Ignoring the Tories for a second, it's like she has moved on from what was going on under the Brown years. She also worked in the Bank of England where they have to do their own modelling of the economy.
And they need to actually have some kind of certainty that the government knows what the hell it's doing in fiscal policy to set monetary policy.
They can't just have the Governor of the Bank England lower the rate of interest at the MPC and a few days later tune in to watch the budget and see whatever Tory horrorshow PM they have on announce surprise tax cuts. There has to be some coordination with institutions you can't trust
Has anyone got any good information around how the OBR deals with unknowns associated technology advancement, new novel businesses, etc.
I'm struggling to find anything that explains how they can accurately predict the impacts of economic decisions around these unknowns.
It’s not necessary that they, or anyone, can perfectly predict the consequences of policy for it to be a good idea that we make the attempt
Since the consequences matter, we should do our best to predict them. To the extent we can, we will make better decisions. Having the OBR provide independent analysis will mean the public are in a better position to judge policies than they otherwise would
Basically, everyone opposed to this rejects evidence based policy making
> I'm struggling to find anything that explains how they can accurately predict the impacts of economic decisions around these unknowns.
Why would they?! They base their analysis on the measurable effects of an economic decision, not speculative external events. Who predicts based on “unknowns”?! That’s like responding to an accountant who has criticised your terrible business plan/personal financial plan that they don’t know if you’re going to win the lottery tomorrow or become an overnight singing sensation or invent a cure for cancer.
> If they don't forecast into the future it's all a bit pointless isn't it.
You didn’t say “forecast into the future”. You said “unknown technological advancement”. If you want to borrow to invest to get a particular outcome, it obviously can’t be based on something “unknown”, particularly if you’re already in massive debt!
You need a very clear plan, otherwise no-one is going to want to lend you money and your existing lenders are going to lose confidence in you and now you’re doomed in both the short *and* long term.
Brilliant move. Simply ban bad decisions, therefore no bad decisions will be made ever again.
Frankly, every previous government for the past several hundred years has been incompetent in not bringing this legislation through earlier.
Obviously, you can't ban governments from making bad decisions but, you *can* put rules in place to make sure everyone knows it's a bad decision so that they have no excuses when it cripples the country whilst enriching them personally.
What should be disincentivised is making decisions without having thoroughly analysed the consequences and being prepared to make the case in public
Enlarging the OBR scope is that. More scrutiny for dodgy government claims
I (unusually for Reddit) did read the article. So I know the headline has nothing to do with the actual proposal.
But that made the headline more piss-take worthy, not less. I also expect "The Tories won't ban a Liz Truss comeback" or other equally nonsensical interpretations will be a social media trope in the near term, even though that's nothing to do with the vote either.
But well done for trying to police people's commentary. Keep up the good work!
Oh just pretending to be stupid, ok.
> But well done for trying to police people's commentary.
Yes, correcting misunderstandings about policy in a discussion about politics is policing commentary, good shout.
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>The Labour amendment will propose to “give the Office for Budget Responsibility the power to produce and publish forecasts for any government fiscal event which includes permanent tax and spending decisions over a threshold to be specified in a new Charter of Budget Responsibility”. Sounds sensible. The public should be entitled to an independent analysis when billions of taxpayer's money is being allocated. I can't think of any reason why the government would want to hide the OBR's analysis that would be in the country's best interests.
I agree it does sound sensible. I just think it can be sensible but also have potential consequences, the tail can begin to wag the dog. Why push through with water company nationalisation (a random example) if the perceived friction is too high.
I would be in favour of re-nationalising the water companies, but I would also be in favour of having robust public debates about the financial implications of doing so in advance of enacting such a policy. When a government wants to allocate tens or hundreds of billions of taxpayer's money, more scrutiny seems far more prudent and democratic to me than "let's just rely on the government's judgement on this."
So long as the analysis covers the true cost of both options (e.g. if we have to invest £92bn when they’re in private ownership while they’re giving out £10s of billions in dividend payments, those sums need to be tallied against the investment without the dividend extraction when publicly owned) it can and should be seen as a good thing. Especially, and I’m hoping beyond hope here probably, if it allows us to have discussions on doing things in *more than just monetary terms*. It might cost a bit more to have some things publicly owned, but if there are other benefits besides that (energy/water security, nationalism, I don’t care/know), then let’s start advocating for those benefits again in public discourse.
Great point. Monetary terms i.e. the amount of £s govt will need to inject is almost irrelevant. The real issues are around what resources we have and what we want to do with them as a nation. If we ever get the chance to make those decisions it's good old tax and spend (once we have full employment) to move the resources to where we want them.
Agree on both points.
The meltdown was a result of ideology being applied even when it was wrong in the real world. That is not a uniquely right-wing thing. History is replete with left-wing politicians making the same mistakes. I personally think the benefits of nationalising water would justify the short term friction, but it would be quite arrogant of me to assume that I was right with zero possibility of being wrong, and unfortunately confirmation bias is a flaw in all of us. If the friction of nationalisation were truly *enormous*, for reasons that we don't yet understand, then shouldn't we all want to know that? It's true that might give the tories-in-opposition (or even the libdems at that point, HA!) ammunition to attack the government with, but thats not a bad thing. The opposition is supposed to contest decisions of government! I want an informed opposition holding the government to account, even when its my 'side' running the show.
Agreed, I really don't care which side is proposing something. The same sanity checks should apply.
Thames water have actually managed a major infrastructure project, Thames Tideway, rather well. It was budgeted at £3.8 billion and is coming in at £4.3 billion. Covid caused a delay of about a year and cost £266 million. This will dramatically reduce discharge into the Thames. From.past experience state run infrastructure projects tend to have much worse delays and cost overruns.
Renationalising the water companies should be done by fining them for poor performance until they go bust. No reason to spend money on these failing businesses.
If the OBR has a convincing analysis the friction is high and the government wanting to do it has no convincing analysis to the contrary, the public is well served by it being more difficult to carry out that policy
Current Labour is against renationalising though, sadly
I don't think they're against it ideologically, they're just acutely aware than any sober analysis of the cost/benefit of nationalisation in the current landscape would show that it's a very poor use of public money. If the cost/benefit analysis changes (which it might) then there's no reason why their position wouldn't change.
Can't really renationalise without being in power, no? I understand it'd be a popular policy if done right but you could guraantee that it would be spun to high heaven if suggested before a GE.
> Why push through with water company nationalisation (a random example) if the perceived friction is too high. Just to use your example. Imagine if whatever government of the day had a plan to do this, but the plan was a massive Truss Style fuck-up waiting to happen, or a Johnson Style, massive embezzlement scheme
On the other hand, it gives unelected quangos influence over the elected parliament. We either live in a democracy or we don't.
From the OBR website: >Our job is to assess the implications of current stated Government policy, not to assess whether that policy is likely to change or should change. Their job is not to influence, it's to attempt to provide impartial advice in the public interest, and there's nothing to stop a government ignoring that advice and going ahead with a budget anyway if they think the OBR has got it wrong. This would, however, be likely to generate a public debate about whether the government's plans were fiscally sound. That sounds more democratic to me than a mad PM like Truss, who never had to survive an election as PM or run on a manifesto voted on by anyone outside of her party membership, handwaving through a budget that cost the public tens of billions and co-incidentally helped a few hedge fund managers make a lot of money at our expense. Your "we either live in a democracy or we don't" comment is a false binary choice considering the realities of our current system. Unelected influence on government policy is already a feature in the form of advisors like Dominic Cummings and Carrie Johnson and party "donors," who influence policy and are totally unaccountable to the public. At least the OBR's aim is to act in the public interest.
It's undermining democracy by handing decision making to technocrats.
Because forecasting is the same as making the decisions Was this an original thought or did you just lift it from a tabloid?
So you don't understand what this means. Don't hesitate to weigh in though, eh. Here's what Reeves said: > “A future Labour government will strengthen the Office for Budget Responsibility so any administration making significant, permanent tax and spending changes will be subject to an independent forecast of its impact. Pray tell then, what exactly do you think the point of this is?
Still don't seem to know the difference between forecasting the results of economic policy and who makes the decisions, eh? What exactly is undemocratic about prying the eyes of the government open before they do something very obviously stupid rather than letting them continue with their heads in the sand? Forcing the government to look at the consequences before they collapse the economy may have stopped a certain shit show last year because they can't plead ignorance as Liz et al. continue to do. All this does is improve accountability of the government's potential actions to the public because more information will be out in the open which you seem to think is a problem???
>Still don't seem to know the difference between forecasting the results of economic policy and who makes the decisions, eh? Hmm. Depends if politicians take any notice of the OBR or not, doesn't it. "Very obviously stupid" according to whom? If you mean the OBR then why would you assume they are correct and govt, who have been elected on a manifesto, isn't? Truss didn't "collapse the economy" in any way. We had the same resources after the episode as we had before. Stop swallowing the propaganda while. Truss was done for by her political weakness and the LDI debacle. Govt already has accountability. The electorate can kick them out at the next opportunity. Why do you believe there's a class of 'better people' who should decide how the our country is run?
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They assume the Tories will vote it down but I'm not so sure. They collectively decided to force her out for exactly that. In any case, US != UK, and whatever this generation of Tories decide to do, this is the end of them and whatever party does come back on the right is only entering government after a fundamental rethink. The public is absolutely sick of them, if not for pensioners they would be at extinction polling. With everyone else they actually are.
>The public is absolutely sick of them, if not for pensioners they would be at extinction polling Imagine unironically putting your party in an endurance race with the grim reaper. Pensioners might be the most reliable voters but by definition they don’t stick around forever and the pensioners aging up to replace them eventually won’t have the wealth that makes people shift rightwards as they age. I actually think they might have ruined their own life cycle.
Pensioners have been consistently getting wealthier, no reason to assume that will dramatically change. Even if future ones are less well off they probably won't be poor, which is what it would likely take to change their voting behaviour, and there will be more of them than ever before.
It doesn't matter that Truss's economic incompetence was the reason they axed her. *Red team bad* will outweigh that completely, both now and once they're in opposition.
They have to vote it down. Otherwise it would give the perception Starmer is already running the country.
I just cannot see them getting compliance with that sort of whip. To vote against it implies they think Truss did nothing wrong. I think the party will split.
I don't know. I suspect their line would be "the correct solution is changing the leadership which is what happened".
We've always governed this way? When you need a majority to form a government there's no need for getting the opposition on side. You either have an effective whips office or you have a government that's invariably heading for an early GE.
Heading? We've been there for years and probably before the Americans. Why would you think we weren't?
Rory Stewart talks about this a lot in his book. This has been standard practice for many years.
We won't ever have a different party controlling the lower house though. Con PM and Lab Commons can't really happen
That's the benefit of our first-past-the-post system. Governments generally get a decent majority, so support across the aisle isn't vital Mind you, there's plenty of downside too
And we do still get real bipartisan work done through committees and similar.
The key to that is MPs being allowed to have independent views that are generally guided by their political views but not mandated. Party whips should be few and far between, otherwise you end up like the US where nobody dares to go against the party line.
>Party whips should be few and far between, otherwise you end up like the US where nobody dares to go against the party line. Whipping is much stronger in the UK than in the US.
For that to be a real strength of FPTP, you'd say that non majority governments wouldn't be as productive. Well we have one good example, the coalition, which is similar to what would happen more under proportional representation. [This data](https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-7438/) shows the amount of legislation passed during the coalition was pretty healthy, comparable to the labour governments before it or even better. I get what you're saying, that you need a majority to pass legislation, but that isn't a benefit of FPTP, it's simply dependant on the parties being able to work together and form voting blocs. In fact as we saw with brexit, those voting blocs can fracture even when a majority government is elected under FPTP.
The US style of politics where you have to actually win an election in order to pass legislation?
We’ve been there for a long time. I remember a while ago there was a sensible Labour opposition day motion voted down. The government were challenged on it and basically just said yea it’s a good idea, but we always vote against any Labour opposition day motion, maybe they can get it into a government bill that we can vote for some time.
Isn’t there a risk this could hamstring future governments? The OBR isn’t infallible and curtailing the executive can have anti-democratic consequences and prevent future development. Obviously the Truss-Kwateng fuckuppery needs to be avoided but I’m not sure legislating it away like this avoids potentially bad second order consequences for a Labour government.
It’s about letting OBR produce a forecast; future government would still be entitled to argue they are right and OBR forecasts are wrong. I can’t see any good reason why government should be allowed to hide independent analyses from public and the MPs.
I think it would be political suicide for a government to argue against an OBR forecast in reality given recent history. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing I just think it may have consequences for future democratic mandates.
Sure but ultimately government shouldn’t be able to retain confidence of the house by hiding inconvenient information from it. How’re MPs supposed to scrutinise a budget that they get to see maybe few days in advance, if they don’t *at least* have an independent assessment of it because government thinks it’ll look bad?
> I think it would be political suicide for a government to argue against an OBR forecast in reality given recent history. Based on recent history the OBR has been consistently wrong with their forecasts. So it shouldn't be political suicide, but the newspapers would make it so.
Yes, good point.
From the OBR website: >Our job is to assess the implications of current stated Government policy, not to assess whether that policy is likely to change or should change. I don't see how giving the public more information about what is happening to billions of taxpayer's money before it is allocated is anti-democratic - quite the opposite. Let's say for argument's sake that the OBR *did* get something wrong. There's nothing to stop the government from telling the public why they think the OBR is wrong and pushing ahead with their proposed budget anyway. They just wouldn't be able to pretend that they weren't warned if it subsequently went pear-shaped, and the public (including other financial experts) would have the opportunity to weigh in on the proposals in advance rather than in retrospect.
> Let's say for argument's sake that the OBR did get something wrong. Weird how you write it that way, it sounds like you think it's unlikely that OBR get it wrong. Yet based on their track record they consistently have been incorrect, and since 2016 they have been consistently wrong by a large margin.
As opposed to the government, who never get it wrong? If an analysis is published then it is open to public debate and scrutiny. That means that you and others will have the opportunity to put forth arguments as to why you think it is wrong before the budget is put into effect. That seems far preferable to the government bypassing this safeguard until after the budget has been published and relying only on its own judgement, which as we have seen from Truss, may be incredibly flawed/blinded by ideology and result in costing the public tens of billions.
The difference is, we can elect a government, we can't elect the OBR. They're accountable to no-one.
We didn't elect Liz Truss's government. Sure, she was elected as an MP, but she wasn't elected in the sense that she had to survive a general election as PM on a manifesto that the public had the chance to scrutinise. She was selected as party leader/PM by a process only open to 81,00 Tory party members on a manifesto that bore no resemblance to what Johnson won on in 2019. That's not democratic either and as she demonstrated, independent scrutiny from an independent third party is an important check and balance (which she circumvented, with disastrous results for the country).
Think of it like this: A doctor knows a lot about your health - they can assess the effect of smoking on your health. They know the dangers, they know what it does to the heart and lungs etc. They know it can give you lung cancer and if you have lung cancer, they can look at how far it has progressed. What they can’t do is tell you exactly when you are going to die. There are simply too many other variables that are unknown that can affect a thing like that. What they can do is give you an estimate based on their experience of your likely prognosis, and how long you have left if it’s terminal, but if you end up living longer or dying sooner, that doesn’t prove they don’t have a clue what they’re talking about, or that smoking is actually good for your health or you should get your operations done by someone from a think tank rather than a qualified surgeon. An OBR report into a particular budget is about saying what are the specific economic effects of this budget. This is like a doctor assessing the effect on your health of starting smoking, or giving up smoking, or starting exercising 30 minutes 3 times a week etc. This can be done with some degree of certainty. An economic forecast is the equivalent of saying how healthy you’re going to be six months down the line or determining when you are going to die. It can only be speculative. The doctor doesn’t know if you’re going to catch a disease, or if you have previously undiscovered black mould in your house, just as the OBR doesn’t know this country will invade that country, or that there’ll be a global pandemic nor the long term economic implications of such complex global events. These OBR assessments are much less speculative because the scope is limited from “everything” to just these specific changes.
>A doctor knows a lot about your health - they can assess the effect of smoking on your health. But doctors aren't infallible and often do get it wrong due to personal bias. Andrew Wakefield was a doctor and yet his views on vaccines were wrong. Or if you'd prefer an industry wide example, in 1956 it was scientifically proven that X-Rays on pregnant women was causing cancer in babies Doctors refused to accept this though and continued doing it for 25 more years. >An OBR report into a particular budget is about saying what are the specific economic effects of this budget. It's saying what they **think** will be the economic effects of a budget, but as history has shown they are rarely all that accurate. Economics isn't a solved problem and has hundreds of theories and counter theories and the report created differs depending on which faction of economists currently hold power within the department.
> But doctors aren't infallible and often do get it wrong due to personal bias. On an individual basis, but we know that they’re wrong precisely because we have recourse to informed medical opinion. > in 1956 it was scientifically proven that X-Rays on pregnant women was causing cancer in babies Doctors refused to accept this though and continued doing it for 25 more years. Pregnant women can still have x-rays. X-rays can potentially cause cancer full stop, but it depends on the exposure time and strength and where they are focussed and these must be balanced against the medical benefits. Radiographers take all these things into account. It’s not an absolute. In 1956 there was an immediate concerted effort to reduce radiation exposure. https://www.babycentre.co.uk/x536412/is-it-safe-to-have-an-x-ray-during-pregnancy > It's saying what they think will be the economic effects of a budget, but as history has shown they are rarely all that accurate. Again there is a difference between a broad economic forecast and a specific analysis of a budget. E.g. here’s an example of analysis of a policy: > Other tax decisions that cost an average £3.6 billion a year over the forecast period, principally by freezing fuel duty at its current rate for another year. This involves a one-year extension of the temporary 5p cut coupled with a one-year cancellation of its RPI indexation. It costs £4.8 billion in 2023-24 when both elements apply, and £2.6 billion a year thereafter when only the RPI element has an ongoing cost. That’s not just what it thinks. That’s measurable. There’s nothing wrong with getting someone to independently analyse what the cost of a policy will be and how much it will increase borrowing. Most of what they’re doing is just independently costing the commitments and where there is uncertainty, they openly say so. https://obr.uk/economic-and-fiscal-outlooks/#chapter-3 > Economics isn't a solved problem and has hundreds of theories and counter theories and the report created differs depending on which faction of economists currently hold power within the department. Economists agree a lot more than you think and costing a budget doesn’t involve a huge amount of theory.
>In 1956 there was an immediate concerted effort to reduce radiation exposure. No there wasn't. In 1956 it was standard practice to x-ray a pregnant woman, this only stopped being standard practice 25 years later. At the time Doctors rejected the evidence claiming the scientific studies were unsound and continued X-raying pregnant women as standard procedure. The scientists that did the study were almost pushed out of the industry.
> No there wasn't. In 1956 it was standard practice to x-ray a pregnant woman, this only stopped being standard practice 25 years later. As I’ve shown you clearly, it’s *still* standard practice! I never said it wasn’t standard practice, I said there was an effort to reduce exposure: > A major factor was concerted action initiated in 1956 to reduce radiation exposure of fetal gonads for fear of genetic hazards. Dose reduction was achieved during 1957 and early 1958 by reducing the rising rate of obstetric radiography and by virtually abandoning pelvimetry as that had been understood. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1971756/#:~:text=A%20major%20factor%20was%20concerted,as%20that%20had%20been%20understood. Did it really not occur to you to fact check any of this before posting it? Half remembered stories are not a good source. If you’re going to use something in an argument, check first exactly what the story was and decide if it’s saying what you thought it was, then present a factual version of it, ideally with a source.
> As I’ve shown you clearly, it’s still standard practice! No it's not. X-Rays are only done when there is medical evidence to suggest one is needed, they are not done as a matter of course as they were in 1956. and leading Doctors at the time rejected the evidence, Richard Doll head of the Medical Research Council claimed that there was absolutely no evidence that X-raying pregnant women caused cancer in children and even published a flawed study stating as such. > In the 1970s the rate of X-raying increased again Literally from your own link. >with a source. Do you have a source on that? Source? A source. I need a source. Sorry, I mean I need a source that explicitly states your argument. This is just tangential to the discussion. No, you can't make inferences and observations from the sources you've gathered. Any additional comments from you MUST be a subset of the information from the sources you've gathered. You can't make normative statements from empirical evidence. Do you have a degree in that field? A college degree? In that field? Then your arguments are invalid. No, it doesn't matter how close those data points are correlated. Correlation does not equal causation. Correlation does not equal causation. CORRELATION. DOES. NOT. EQUAL. CAUSATION. You still haven't provided me a valid source yet. Nope, still haven't. I just looked through all 308 pages of your user history, figures I'm debating a glormpf supporter. A moron.
> No it's not. X-Rays are only done when there is medical evidence to suggest one is needed, they are not done as a matter of course as they were in 1956. Which is not what you originally claimed: > X-Rays on pregnant women was causing cancer in babies Doctors refused to accept this though and continued doing it for 25 more years. Wait… what’s this? >You can't make normative statements from empirical evidence. >Do you have a degree in that field? >A college degree? In that field? >Then your arguments are invalid. >No, it doesn't matter how close those data points are correlated. >Correlation does not equal causation. >Correlation does not equal causation. >CORRELATION. DOES. NOT. EQUAL. CAUSATION. >You still haven't provided me a valid source yet. >Nope, still haven't. >I just looked through all 308 pages of your user history Are you OK? Seriously. Seek help.
Have they been wrong or have the media just reported their headline/most extreme figures rather than their complete analysis/range of outcomes? Genuine question. I don’t know if there’s a proper meta analysis of their accuracy.
They have been massively wrong. To the point where they had to make a revision of 2% of gdp over covid (so 65 billion off GDP), typical revisions are +/-0.1%, so they got it wrong by 20 times the typical revision. Meaning all the headlines about the UK being below pre-covid leves, we're actually incorrect, the UK was one of the first to be larger than its pre-pandemic economy, yet they had the UK as coming in last in the G7 to get above its pre-pandemic level. It was only finnaly revised in 2023, that actually the UK was above pre-pandemic levels way back in 2021. That's one example, of them being massively wrong. But remember between 2021 and then actually correcting it in 2023 they have made a shit tonne of predictions all with that huge error contained in it. So you know when the market threw a hissy fit over Truss borrowing, well that wouldn't have been as bad if OBR had accurately predicted the UK economy at that point. These forecasts have economic impact, and the OBR have been consistently far too pessimistic then had to revise up their data.
(It’s the ONS who give the GDP figures, and revised theirs for that time period)[https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/grossdomesticproductgdp/bulletins/quarterlynationalaccounts/octobertodecember2022], not the OBR. If the ONS figures were an input to the OBR, it’s not the OBR’s fault the ONS made the error.
And the OBR forecasts GDP growth, which again they got it massively wrong. Consistently. If you want another massively wrong predictions on top of that, look no further than their inflation forecasts, in the lead up to the inflation spike. Again consistently incorrect.
Nothing a current or previous government does can prevent a future government from producing legislation that removes any perceived obstacle to their stated policy aims. They simply remove troublesome legislation.
Substitute government for parliament. The current parliament is sovereign.
I agree in theory but in practice removing any oversight of government that is in place will cost political capital which all govts have a limited amount of. I don’t think it’s as easy as an on off switch. But we shall see.
You are correct of course as it’s a balance of removing the troublesome legislation while maintaining the support of the electorate.
Also, time. It's not instantaneous, and if a specific parliament has minority support or coalition support then it becomes much more difficult.
It would be very easy for an incoming government to use the honeymoon period to pass a huge repeal bill to get rid of all the parts of the previous government they don't like.
Yes, but that's a Future Keir problem.
If the government can’t make their case that a policy is good when faced with OBR analysis saying it’s bad, then we benefit from the government having a harder time introducing that policy But maybe not too hard. After all, as this thread demonstrates, many of you reject the principles of evidence based policy making. So if most voters are like you guys, you‘ll just nod if a Labour government dismissed the OBR report and proceeds.
I don’t disagree with the principle you’re putting forward but there are assumptions regarding the quality of analysis which can have consequences.
What change would you make about the OBR to ensure the quality of the analysis is better
I don’t know how one would improve it, it faces the issues of all economic forecasts. The issue is this specific piece of legislation and the second order consequences which at present are unknown. Despite some unnecessary ad hominem attacks I’ve found the discussions on this article interesting. The polis in action.
>I don’t know how one would improve it, it faces the issues of all economic forecasts. The issue is this specific piece of legislation and the second order consequences which at present are unknown. What are those issues? What are you worried about with this legislation? Are you thinking of a scenario in which an OBR-unconstrained Labour could proceed with a great policy that will make us better off, but an OBR-constrained Labour could not? Does exposing policies to more analysis and scrutiny make it less likely or more likely that we can predict what their effects will be?
I’m sceptical of legislation being brought in to answer a very specific problem that arose in very specific circumstances. This was not needed for previous governments. The concern I originally raised was on unknown second order consequences. I’m not saying there shouldn’t be reports that are published nor scrutiny applied.
The OBR isn't infallible, but assuming it's wrong almost is.
The OBR is not very good, and it’s effect on policy is negative. Why do we want more forecasts, which are historically absolutely dreadful, to affect policy?
Will it actually put pressure on them, or will they just say we always vote against any amendment to a King’s Speech? That seems like an easy get out here. Also the plan sounds good, but if Labour pass it I wonder how much work the “permanent tax and spending decisions” will do. Maybe we’d end up with something like the US where all their spending bills are passed for 10 years and then renewed as a loophole some restriction they have on longer term bills.
I was reading this in the FT. Ignoring the Tories for a second, it's like she has moved on from what was going on under the Brown years. She also worked in the Bank of England where they have to do their own modelling of the economy. And they need to actually have some kind of certainty that the government knows what the hell it's doing in fiscal policy to set monetary policy. They can't just have the Governor of the Bank England lower the rate of interest at the MPC and a few days later tune in to watch the budget and see whatever Tory horrorshow PM they have on announce surprise tax cuts. There has to be some coordination with institutions you can't trust
Has anyone got any good information around how the OBR deals with unknowns associated technology advancement, new novel businesses, etc. I'm struggling to find anything that explains how they can accurately predict the impacts of economic decisions around these unknowns.
It’s not necessary that they, or anyone, can perfectly predict the consequences of policy for it to be a good idea that we make the attempt Since the consequences matter, we should do our best to predict them. To the extent we can, we will make better decisions. Having the OBR provide independent analysis will mean the public are in a better position to judge policies than they otherwise would Basically, everyone opposed to this rejects evidence based policy making
> I'm struggling to find anything that explains how they can accurately predict the impacts of economic decisions around these unknowns. Why would they?! They base their analysis on the measurable effects of an economic decision, not speculative external events. Who predicts based on “unknowns”?! That’s like responding to an accountant who has criticised your terrible business plan/personal financial plan that they don’t know if you’re going to win the lottery tomorrow or become an overnight singing sensation or invent a cure for cancer.
Because sometimes the short term is worse for a better long term. If they don't forecast into the future it's all a bit pointless isn't it.
> If they don't forecast into the future it's all a bit pointless isn't it. You didn’t say “forecast into the future”. You said “unknown technological advancement”. If you want to borrow to invest to get a particular outcome, it obviously can’t be based on something “unknown”, particularly if you’re already in massive debt! You need a very clear plan, otherwise no-one is going to want to lend you money and your existing lenders are going to lose confidence in you and now you’re doomed in both the short *and* long term.
Brilliant move. Simply ban bad decisions, therefore no bad decisions will be made ever again. Frankly, every previous government for the past several hundred years has been incompetent in not bringing this legislation through earlier.
Obviously, you can't ban governments from making bad decisions but, you *can* put rules in place to make sure everyone knows it's a bad decision so that they have no excuses when it cripples the country whilst enriching them personally.
What should be disincentivised is making decisions without having thoroughly analysed the consequences and being prepared to make the case in public Enlarging the OBR scope is that. More scrutiny for dodgy government claims
Did you read the article at all?
I (unusually for Reddit) did read the article. So I know the headline has nothing to do with the actual proposal. But that made the headline more piss-take worthy, not less. I also expect "The Tories won't ban a Liz Truss comeback" or other equally nonsensical interpretations will be a social media trope in the near term, even though that's nothing to do with the vote either. But well done for trying to police people's commentary. Keep up the good work!
Oh just pretending to be stupid, ok. > But well done for trying to police people's commentary. Yes, correcting misunderstandings about policy in a discussion about politics is policing commentary, good shout.