What are political correspondents – from Laura, Nick and Robert on down – there for? Not to go to the same old briefings and sing the same old song? Independent judgment is a coverage pearl beyond price?
And what are economics correspondents there for on the big budget outing? Not merely to take the latest Office of Budget Responsibility growth figures and turn them into a uniform tale of woe. As Alex Brummer of the Mail (and before that the Guardian) very reasonably pointed out, the OBR has “a flawed track record” on forecasting– and is glooming a damned sight harder than the Bank of England and IMF.
That may be right or it may be wrong. But the point of employing economics editors is to give the audience their own special take on Philip Hammond’s figuring, not to simply transfer pages of OBR (or indeed, extra-gloomy Institute of Fiscal Studies prognostication) into holy writ. Two questions matter most. Are we really in a hole this big? And even if we are, what can we do about it?
