Gordon Brown, Britain’s chancellor of the exchequer, loves to boast about the strength of the economy he has steered for nine years. His was “the first government of any party to achieve eight years of uninterrupted growth since 1805”, he exulted last December.

When he delivers his annual Budget to parliament on Wednesday, weaker economies will doubtless again prove ripe targets for his contempt. For the fifth successive year, British growth was “higher than France, higher than Germany, higher than Italy, higher than the euro area, higher than the European Union”, he said of 2005.