Credit must go to Gordon Brown

The Chancellor has consistently stated that his number one aim is to maintain and entrench economic stability in the UK. The figures show that since 1997, UK economic growth has been the least volatile of all 28 countries in the OECD. The UK economy hasn’t grown the fastest over the period – which is not a surprise considering the OECD includes countries such as Slovakia and South Korea – but it has been a clear leader in terms of stability. Gordon Brown’s unerring knack of predicting UK economic growth (predictions that have usually been well wide of those by the City’s best paid economists) has been particularly impressive.

Government spending will have to fall if the government is to meet these targets. The government managed to ride out the global slowdown of 2000-02 by increasing spending from 35.1% in 1999-2000 to 39.1% last year, but spending is forecast to fall to 38.3% by 2011-12, fractionally lower than when Labour came to power in 1997.

What does this mean for bond markets? Government borrowing must fall, and since government borrowing is funded by gilt issuance, new issuance of government bonds must fall.

The area of the market that will benefit the most will be long dated gilts. Over the past five years, the surge in government spending has been funded largely by long dated gilt issuance, but the long end has still managed to outperform short and medium dated maturities thanks to pension funds’ insatiable appetite. I expect long dated gilts to reap the benefits of the removal of this supply overhang.