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I think it depends precisely what question is being asked. There's not complete consensus that the government policies were bad for growth (although two-thirds is a decent majority who say it was), but I think you'd get much closer to that consensus if you asked whether Osbourne's explanation...

Apologies for resurrecting a slightly old thread, but Triggaaar I saw this today and thought it might be of interest... The Importance of Elections for UK Economic Activity

The FT do a survey of prominent economists annually, but I don't think that would show the consensus that SWL is talking about. I think it depends what he means by the policy. Pretty much any half-decent economist would have told you that austerity was going to have a negative impact on the...

Triggaaar didn't like Simon Wren-Lewis' last column - he's likely to like this one even less. It's a lengthy read but a good (relatively non-technical) economic assessment of government behaviour since 2009. Simon Wren-Lewis - The Austerity Con

Out of interest, do you write anything yourself or is every post a cut and paste from a press release? From memory a lot of your Israel stuff is similar...

Politicians are the wrong people to ask about debt serviceability. Try asking one of the traders on here, someone might deal in government bonds. This chart makes the point quite succinctly, however. I (kind of) agree with you that it's difficult to directly compare performance (and SWL makes...

This is I think where we fundamentally differ. Does the debt need to be paid off at some point? Yes. Does it need to be paid off today, or tomorrow? No. In December the government paid off the last of its WW1 debt. 98 years after issuing the bonds. The bonds were worth £1.9bn - or 0.12% of GDP...

Sorry to disappoint you but I don't have any major political prejudice and I think you are talking complete bollocks. We have a parliament that votes on issues put before them - and the government does on occasion lose these votes. Similarly, the opposition do not oppose every single motion put...

There was a belief (and there largely still is) that recessions are temporary downturns in an ever-rising tide. In this context sharp increases in borrowing during a recession weren't seen as a major problem, as when the economy recovered the debt would come down and GDP would increase fast...