Latest Government spending figures awful.

“These are pretty ghastly figures and come as somewhat of a surprise,” said Andrew Goodwin, a senior economic adviser to Ernst & Young.

Lord Mandelson’s point is finally getting home inside Number Ten: he knows the bad news can only get worse. Chancellor Alistair Darling agrees with him.

Perhaps in the end, this era will be known as The Age of Surprise. There seems now to be nobody in either the Government or the financial establishment who isn’t surprised by every single fiscal and economic data set that emerges.

The ONS said government borrowing topped £4.3bn last month – far more than expected.
Analysts and other naifs had expected the government to repay about £2.8bn of its debts. But as every fully awake observer did expect, tax income for the month was lower than forecast. The pound dropped half a centime in twenty-minutes on the news.

The key number in all this is that Government spending also rose sharply. Although again considered by The Slog and others to be inevitable with increased benefits costs, UK regulatory agencies didn’t see this as part of the script.

We’ve been hammering Skype in search of more overseas professional reactions to this. More updates as and when.