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Comprehensive Spending Review

No, it is not in there. That is not a document from the OBR; it is a document from the Government. To what extent is the Chancellor talking to the head and other members of the OBR, who are meant to be independent? If they are meeting, were minutes taken? If so, could we have copies of them so that, for the sake of transparency, we know the nature of the argument that we are dealing with? The Chancellor tells us that we are all in this together. I refer to the great economist Michal Kalecki, who in 1943—note the date—wrote a brilliant article in Political Quarterly. He said, apropos of exactly what the Chancellor has said: "““For here a moral principle of the highest importance is at stake. The fundamentals of capitalist ethics require that ‘you shall earn your bread in sweat’—unless you happen to have private means””." I wonder whom Kalecki, if he were alive today, might have in mind. Of course, they are not laughing, because they know what this is really all about.