The UK is poorer than it thought it was. This is the most important fact about the crisis. The struggle over the distribution of the losses is going to be brutal. It will be made more so by the second most important fact about the crisis: it has had a huge effect on the public finances. The deficits are unmatched in peacetime.
Happily, the general election would appear to offer a golden opportunity for a debate. Is that not the discussion the country ought to have? Yes. Is it the discussion it is going to have? No. What the government would do if re-elected remains, even after the pre-Budget report, “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma”, as Churchill said of Stalin's Russia.
On the Treasury's current forecasts, the economy will regain 2008 levels of economic activity in 2012. Four years of expected growth would have vanished. In last week's pre-Budget report, the Treasury forecast growth of 1.25 per cent next year, 3.5 per cent in 2011 and 2012, then 3.25 per cent in 2013 and 2014. Suppose that growth were to continue at 3.25 per cent a year thereafter. It would still take until 2031 before the economy was as big as it would have been if the 1998-2007 trend had continued. The cumulative loss of output would be 160 per cent of 2007 gross domestic product. If growth after 2014 were at the pre-2008 trend rate, lost GDP would be almost three times 2007 GDP by 2030 (see chart). It is easy to imagine worse possibilities.
