Continental Europeans believe rules, at least of the fiscal kind, are there to be broken. Not so, the UK’s prudent chancellor. Gordon Brown’s ninth budget gave little joy either to taxpayers or his critics. But it did allow him to declare, with some satisfaction, that he had met his golden rule, to borrow only to invest over the economic cycle.

Well, sort of. On his own criteria he has, but those have not been consistent over time, with the changes all to the chancellor’s advantage. The latest is the reclassification of £3bn of road maintenance spending as investment – statistically valid, perhaps, but the timing invites cynicism. Nor can this disguise the swing from budget surpluses to deficits since the late 1990s. The OECD calculates Britain’s public finances have deteriorated faster than those of any other G7 nation since 2000.