| Summary: | This book is about the politics of economic ideas, and the inevitable yet hidden politics of technocratic economic governance, explored through a focus on the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR)--the institution designed to oversee Britain's fiscal policy. Drawing on an in-depth qualitative analysis of official documents and interviews with professional economists and technocrats, the book develops the politics of economic method lens to shed new light on the judgement and discretion inherent in interpreting economic ideas in practice. This analysis reveals the OBR's remit of objective distance from the political fray to be grounded in a false premise. Despite appeals to independent and 'scientific' economic expertise, there is always a politics of economic policy, embodied in how technocratic governance institutions are created, and how they choose to examine and narrate the economy. Economic models and discourses are socially constructed, reproducing and reimagining knowledge about an economy's trajectory, and how it should be studied and managed. The book interrogates the broader backdrop against which such deliberations take place, exploring the twenty-first-century evolution of macroeconomic orthodoxy and the British model of capitalism. It engages three 'once in a century' shocks, analysing British capitalism's uncertain trajectory as policymakers navigated the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis and the upheavals of Brexit and COVID. By delineating competing constructions of economic reason and showing how they underpin models of British capitalism, growth, and crisis response, the book provides an indispensable account of the politics of technocracy, and of Britain's contemporary political economy.
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