Conflict in the Middle East makes official economic forecasts immediately out of date

By Steve Schifferes, Honorary Research Fellow, City Political Economy Research Centre, City St George's, University of London

The UK chancellor of the exchequer would not have wanted to deliver her spring statement against the background of a fresh threat to the world economy.

For while Rachel Reeves announced that she has the “right economic plan for the country” in a “yet more uncertain world”, the conflict in the Middle East will undoubtedly complicate the UK’s economic prospects. And the latest economic forecast by the independent Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), to which she was responding, may already be out…

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