We have launched our paper analysing the effect of Gordon Brown's fiscal rules, and rival proposals to replace them with a committee of impartial wise men. We don't like either policy, and urge a return to the pre-Brown era where Chancellors felt obliged to present their tough choices to Parliament, uncloaked by the technocratic device of a rule that merely served to obscure a deteriorating fiscal position. Real political choices were being made for us  - higher public investments in return for higher debt - and the rules stopped this being seen clearly. 

It happened to coincide with the launch of the IFS's (slightly longer) Green Budget*.   They touch upon the same area in their monumental work (p106-112), but with their usual magisterial objectivity say that the Tories "would need to address a number of issues".  Our verdict is more blunt:

"The OBR would reproduce the same failure [as Labour's fiscal rules]. In the event of the wrong path being followed, who should you blame? The appointed chair of this office, the mandate he was given or the Chancellor for how he interpreted its recommendations? It is a recipe for fudge".  (this from today's comment piece on the Guardian). 

Discussion of the Conservatives' Office for Budget Responsibility since it was announced last September has been minimal.  Given that the policy, if successfully implemented, might mark a significant shift of power over a critical policy area into a new appointed office (i.e. quango), this is bizarre.  Our paper intends to address this vacuum.  Tell us what you think. 

*More on the IFS's Green budget, and David Miles' intriguing economic forecast, in a later post