Badenoch and Farage should stop playground politics of making rules they can't keep

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. That's the golden rule I remember being taught as a child in primary school. Not a bad guiding principle.

- Ben Zaranko

A little later, upon starting university, I discovered that economists had come up with one of their own: the golden rule savings rate is the one that maximises long-run consumption per person. Then, when I joined the Institute for Fiscal Studies, I discovered yet another golden rule, this one adopted by Gordon Brown as chancellor: a promise to borrow only for investment that benefits future generations, not to fund day-to-day spending over the economic cycle.

Golden rules abound - and now we have another. Tory leader Kemi Badenoch has announced a “new golden economic rule” to guide the policy of a future Conservative government. This rule requires that for every pound saved via spending cuts, at least half will go towards reducing borrowing. Only the remainder could be spent on tax cuts or extra spending elsewhere.

I can see the big picture message the Conservatives are trying to send here: spend less, and borrow less. Those are perfectly reasonable as high-level objectives. But their golden rule is an oddity, which I doubt would stand the test of time.