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Hello and welcome to Political Thinking.

There's one question which haunts the Chancellor, haunts any Chancellor of any political party.

It is what will the IFSA, because the verdict of the Institute for Fiscal Studies on whether

the numbers add up in any budget or what we these days have to call fiscal event, can

be devastating for a politician?

That verdict is treated like the word of God, not least by broadcasters like the BBC,

who have experts from the IFS on our programmes all the time.

My guest on Political Thinking this week is the director of the Institute for Fiscal

Studies, the IFS Paul Johnson.

Welcome to Political Thinking.

Thank you.

If the IFS is the word of God, that makes you God.

How does that feel?

Very strange, I don't think.

The IFS, all we are as it were, is we are a research institute who happened to work on

fiscal things, which means public spending and tax.

And when the government or the opposition make big announcements on tax and spending,

we analyse it and we analyse it off the back of decades now of experience that we've

got with the numbers, with understanding what this stuff means.

And also we're able to say, well, do these add up?

Is it going to achieve what the chancellor says it's going to achieve?

...