In downgrading British debt from AAA to AA1, Moody’s was explicit enough to mention weak growth as the main problem. Now, I couldn’t in itself care less about what Moody’s thinks, because credit ratings agencies are themselves bastions of utter incompetence who continued to rate subprime junk mortgage-backed securities as AAA long after it became clear that they were dangerous default-ridden products. But Osborne himself made clear that Britain’s credit rating was the metric on which we should judge his performance. Yet although Moody’s mentioned weak growth as the problem, Osborne continues to talk about how reducing Britain’s debt-load is his main priority, something that he has completely failed to do:

That ultimately is the choice for Britain — either we can abandon our efforts to deal with our debt problems and make a difficult situation very much worse or we can redouble our efforts to overcome our debts and make sure this country can earn its way in the world.

Osborne is tackling this from the wrong end of the problem. Strong, sustainable economic growth is the way to tackle the debt problem in the long run. But Osborne’s fiscal austerity is not the way to strong sustainable economic growth, which means he is failing by on his own terms and by his own definition. In terms of growth, since 2007 Britain has done worse than comparable countries.

Read… George Osborne Still Doesn’t Get It