Flawed OBR’s word is not gospel truth

HOW many Tories would honestly want to be in Jeremy Hunt’s shoes today?

The Chancellor’s Budget will have huge ramifications: for his reputation, for his ailing party and for the future of Britain.

If it flops, the Conservatives seem doomed to electoral defeat – if not annihilation – and the country will be saddled with a deeply damaging Labour government.

But if the public warm to it, there is a vanishingly slender prospect it might salvage the Tories’ poll hopes.

Given the high stakes, Mr Hunt could be forgiven for following the long tradition of chancellors who enjoyed a glass of whisky while delivering their budgets.

If leaks are to be believed, he will slash national insurance by another 2p tomorrow, on top of the 2p cut he announced last autumn which took effect in January.

This would leave hundreds of pounds extra in the pay packets of hard-pressed workers. It would espouse the traditional Tory values of rewarding aspiration and making work pay and, if successful, could help resuscitate our gasping economy.

The million- dollar question, though, is whether the public notices reductions in NI contributions? Last time around, the Government got precisely zero credit.

People feel an income tax cut viscerally, making it much more politically potent.

of course, this may be a card Mr Hunt is keeping up his sleeve.

But he is a hostage of the office for Budget Responsibility, which supposedly provides independent analysis of the UK’s public finances. It has warned there is no headroom for hefty giveaways.

This puts the Chancellor in a bind. He knows all too well that by eschewing the watchdog, Liz Truss spooked the markets.

why, though, has this unelected body been allowed to gainsay the policy wishes of elected ministers? Since being set up by George osborne in 2010, the oBR hasn’t occasionally got its figures a little wrong. It gets them wildly, crazily wrong every time – to the tune of £558billion in just 13 years.

Stuffed to the gunwales with ex-Treasury officials and Left-wing think-tank wonks, it has been part of the dismal economic orthodoxy that has overseen pitiful growth.

Aren’t we entitled to ask if it is up to the job? There may be some point to a body that can hold chancellors’ feet to the fire.

But it’s time to stop treating its every word as if handed down from Sinai on tablets of stone.