After years hitching his economic credibility on low interest rates, George Osborne is executing an outright U-turn as he prepares to chalk them up as a "sign of success".
The chancellor's change of tune comes as the unemployment rate fell to 7.1%, on the brink of the Bank of England's 7.0% threshold at which policymakers will consider raising the base interest rate from its historic 0.5% low.
Osborne's aides told the Financial Times that higher interest rates would be welcomed by savers and a "sign of success". Even though it would be bad news for mortgage holders, Osborne's team insisted: "It’s not something we are worried about."
See also:
Osborne's relaxedness about high interest rates is a stark contrast from the doom-laden pronouncements he used to make about them, warning high interest rates would be a "disaster" that would add £21 billion to debt interest repayments, while low interest rates were a "test of our success".
Here are just seven examples...
