In the Telegraph, Jeremy Warner states “Lack of growth has completely poleaxed the centre piece of the Government’s economic strategy — getting the deficit under control.”  and concludes “Osborne is often accused of cowardice and a lack of radicalism. He needs to be much bolder if he is ever to get to grips with the public finances, critics say. This may or may not be true, but the perhaps surprising reality is that if he is given the five years now needed to complete his plans, he will have brought about a remarkable transformation — some £24bn in selected tax cuts at the same time as a fiscal squeeze which reduces the size of the state as a proportion of GDP back to where it was before the last government began its madness. Brown’s public sector expansion will have been entirely reversed.”

Clearly, the starving off of all the grand schemes Brown initiated as a policy filter is not that well thought out.  Progress is progress, so some of what is now dust was causing growth that has now been lost.

Long term growth is caused by small businesses that can adapt to new conditions becoming large concerns making stuff that the world needs.  Of course stuff now can include intellectual capital realised from the results of ecommerce and other profound changes in the economic sphere that the UK is utterly failing to become adept with because investment is impossible, so companies continue to ride the same wave to shore.  But the tide is still going out because the Government has to create more dependency on introduced capital as it has utterly failed to stimulate sales.  The worst kind of manager shuts the door to preserve demand.