''Irresponsible election promises will hit brutal economic reality'' Martin Wolf

The UK election is a competition in irresponsibility. The Conservatives promise to take the UK out of the world’s deepest free trade area, though nobody knows quite how and when. Labour is even more obscure on Brexit and outbids the Tories in making expensive, radical and incredible promises, across the board. Yet the economic realities will not respond to the charms of Boris Johnson or Jeremy Corbyn, as voters may. What are those realities? Four need particular attention: productivity; employment; investment; and the external balance. These realities are linked and impose tight constraints on the true, as opposed to fanciful, choices the UK now faces. As the Institute for Fiscal Studies notes, “over the last 11 years, productivity — as measured by output per hour worked — has grown by just 2.9 per cent..
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