Living Standards to Be Lower in 2015 Than in 2010, IFS Warns

George Osborne, Chancellor of the Exchequer

THE GUARDIAN: Delivering its judgment on George Osborne's autumn statement, Institute for Fiscal Studies backs claims by Ed Balls that family budgets are being squeezed hard

Britain's leading experts on tax and spending have said that living standards would be lower at the end of the current parliament than at the start as they backed claims by the shadow chancellor Ed Balls that family budgets were being squeezed hard under the coalition.

Delivering its judgment on George Osborne's autumn statement, the Institute for Fiscal Studies took issue with the way Labour had calculated its estimate of a £1,600 loss to the average family in the three years since the coalition came to power in 2010 but said it was "pretty consistent" with survey data showing a big drop in household incomes between 2009-10 and 2011-12.

Paul Johnson, the IFS's director, said there was a lack of reliable figures for the current year, but added: "We do know from household surveys that income fell sharply in 2010 and 2011. It is almost certainly significantly lower now than it was in 2010.

"And while it should start to grow it will surely still be below its 2010 level by the time we get to the election in 2015." » | Larry Elliot and Philip Inman | Friday, December 06, 2013

George Osborne's Series of Bitter Pills
THE GUARDIAN: Message that 'we're all in it together' seems hollow as chancellor takes aim at public sector workers and those reliant on credits

This was the day George Osborne did his best not to be buried by bad news. He came to the chamber of the House of Commons to deliver an autumn statement that prophesied a long, bleak winter for the British economy, a downturn unmatched in the postwar era, one that would stretch for seven lean years.

His task was to release a mudslide of gloomy numbers, forecasts and projections – and somehow remain standing, looking like a man who not only bore no blame for this dire state of affairs but who would pull the country out of the mess. There can't have been many tougher assignments in recent British political history. Just one of the announcements Osborne had to make would, in normal times, have represented a day of despair for a chancellor. But these are not normal times.

So he had to declare that the coalition's signature political promise would be broken: they would not, after all, pay off the deficit by the end of this parliament. That goal had now receded to the distant horizon of 2016-17.

All the pain, the tax rises and spending cuts, that were meant to turn red ink black, would be, if not quite in vain, in pursuit of a goal now revealed as vanishingly remote. » | Jonathan Freedland | Tuesday, November 29, 2011