The Labour Government has seemed somewhat desperate as it has scrabbled around for ways to meet its fiscal rules ahead of the Budget today, writes Business Editor Ian McConnell.

It is truly incredible that it continues to shun an obvious solution.

With Labour apparently having been scrabbling around somewhat desperately to try to meet its self-imposed fiscal rules in today’s Budget, it is truly incredible Sir Keir Starmer’s administration continues to shun a huge and obvious solution.

Recent weeks have been dominated by speculation about which particular unpalatable measures the UK Government might choose in its attempt to meet fiscal rules which are dispiritingly close to those of the Conservatives previously.

Some Cabinet ministers have seemed a bit less scared about highlighting Brexit as something which has been detrimental to the UK economy. However, the Labour Government refuses to do anything to address this damage - which is for the avoidance of doubt enormous - in a meaningful way.

A new working paper on the impact of Brexit published by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), which is based in the US at Cambridge in Massachusetts, puts the spotlight on the scale of the damage to the UK economy.

The authors of the working paper are Nicholas Bloom of Stanford University, Philip Bunn of the Bank of England, Paul Mizen of King’s College London, Pawel Smietanka of the Deutsche Bundesbank, and........

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