Is like an awkward date you wait for them to show up at the restaurant, after ten years you decide they are probably not coming. The obr has assumed at each of the last 16 fiscal events that productivity growth would return to its pre crisis trend of about 2 a year, but it has remained stubbornly flat. So today they revise down the outlook for productivity growth, business investment, and gdp growth across the forecast period. That line was more important than Everything Else in the speech combined. But a Second Striking feature of this budget concerns public spending and austerity. After the last six elections, weve had big tax rises to pay for extra public spending. Not this time. An historic shift. And yet, we still have spending cuts baked in to our plans, sizeable spending cuts. Heres the graph. Per capita spending on Government Services from 2015 to 2022. So is this really do able . Today the chancellor bunged some billions into the Public Sector to ease the pain in the next coup