Graph of the week - Government borrowing predictions are way off

This week's Autumn Statement from the Chancellor George Osborne exposed what a mess he is making of the economy, and the graph above illustrates just one of the many things he has got wrong.

In 2010 he said that austerity would work and drive down government borrowing. The blue bars show his 2010 forecast for driving down government borrowing. But austerity strangled the economic recovery and we had a double dip recession, which meant income from taxes dropped off. And in turn that meant borrowing had to go up to plug the gap.

The red bars shows the actual borrowing that has happened and shows clearly George Osborne has got it badly wrong.

Graph taken from an article on the Independent website here.