The May General Election debate surrounded the way the different parties might approach the public finances. There has always been disagreement on this topic but it was particularly fierce this time.

The Conservatives pushed hard that if people were not willing to sign up to their fiscal plans they were either deficit deniers (Labour mainly) and likely to lead us to bankruptcy and ruin or had secret plans to put up taxes (the Lib Dems). A crucial difference in the election was that for the first time the debate went on in the shadow of independent forecasts of what the world was going to look like, carried out by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) – a body created in 2010. Its statements were held up as the true text, around which the debate must pivot.