#fiscal-deficit

#fiscal-deficit

Figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed public sector net borrowing the difference between spending and income was 11.7bn last month, 1.9bn less than in the same month a year earlier. In the first snapshot since the November budget, the reading was above City predictions of a 10bn deficit. Tom Davies, an ONS senior statistician, said: Despite an increase in spending, this month's borrowing was the lowest November for four years.

Despite years of denunciation from his left and far-right opponents that Macron has engaged in ultraneoliberalism, there hasn't been any. Not on a macro level, anyway, where both French government spending (57.3% of GDP) and tax receipts (51.4% of GDP) are among the highest in the world, including social spending, which outpaces any of its European neighbours. At the same time, it's impossible to have spent the past decade in France without encountering the widely shared perception and accusation that public services are in decline.