George Osborne is in today's Wall Street Journal here, bragging about Britain's fiscal discipline, among other things:
"In the U.K., faced four years ago with a record budget deficit of over 10%, we set out a clear deficit-reduction plan and steadily implemented it. The challenging spending totals I set out for the British government have been consistently achieved year after year."
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard has heard it all before, and says baloney, here:
On the fiscal front, Britain has a deficit of 5pc of GDP a full five years into the economic recovery, when growth is running at 3pc and should be generating a windfall of tax revenue. This is prima facie evidence of a chronic reliance on state borrowing to perpetuate a consumption model.
The deficit is 4.4pc in France, 1.5pc in Italy and 0.2pc in Germany. The US deficit - once similar to ours - has dropped to 2.8pc of GDP on a quarterly basis. Britain sticks out like a sore thumb. ...
For all the superficial likeness, the Anglo-Saxon growth stories in Britain and America have nothing in common. The US has cut its current account deficit from 6pc to 1.9pc of GDP. It is on track to achieve energy independence by 2018, igniting a revival of its chemical, plastics, glass and steel industries along the way. Luck has played its part but one recovery is durable, the other is literally on borrowed time.
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Methinks Ambrose overestimates US GDP in his analysis to arrive at his rosy 2.8% deficit, and is too sanguine about the future of Republican spending restraint now that Cromnibus has passed, but you get the idea . . . Politicians spinning tales.
