George Osborne’s austerity budgets show ever-diminishing returns

The chancellor is becoming increasingly hamstrung both by his political propaganda and his own self-imposed rules

It would be interesting to know if George Osborne, while preparing last week's budget, had time to see the first instalment of Norma Percy's television series on the Obama White House. If so he might have been reminded of something historically interesting, namely a matter about which the chancellor, who fancies himself as a historian, has not been straight with the public.

More or less from his arrival in the Oval Office in 2009, Barack Obama's first year was dominated by the financial crisis. And, curious though it may seem to the many who have swallowed Osborne's propaganda, the banking crisis in the US, rather like the banking crisis in the rest of the developed world, was not caused by Labour.

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