Rarely before have the frailties of fiscal forecasting been so evident. The Chancellor’s hopes of dragging Britain back to prosperity rely on an array of “finger in the wind” prophesies.
George Osborne’s roadmap to the end of austerity in 2018 rests on unknowable assumptions about the behaviour of autonomous players ranging from phone companies to oil traders and investors in secret Swiss bank accounts.
In a one-off boost to the public finances, the Office of Budget Responsibility reckons an auction of 4G telecoms licences will raise £3.5 billion. But nobody can foresee this with any confidence — it could be a flop or a wild success. Similarly imprecise is a £3.2 billion boost over the next two years purportedly to come from an agreement with