Osborne's Budget 2012 is not what he had planned

A picture in yesterday's papers shows an unshaven, bleary-eyed George Osborne jogging around St James' Park, Westminster, at the start of another long day. It is safe to say that the Budget was uppermost in his mind. Doubtless too, he would have been ruminating about Harold Macmillan's famous warning that 'events, dear boy' have a habit of upsetting the best laid plans of government.
According to the original plan outlined in 2010 by now Osborne ideally should have been standing up on Budget Day announcing that his plans were on course to meet their original 2015 targets. Of course they are not as we know thanks to external events like the euro-crisis and high inflation, as was flagged up in the Autumn Statement last year. The deficit-reduction targets have stretched into 2016/17, a year which many in the public sector now fear could be another cliff-edge drop in public spending, coming as it does after a general election.
The reality is no one, least of all Osborne, knows where the economy is heading. The original deficit-reduction targets are out the window though deficit reduction as a strategy ploughs on. The Chancellor is at the mercy of international events, gleaning hope from latest growth figures in the US or the settlement of the Greek crisis or even changes to growth forecasts in China. The Treasury will put a gloss on the figures - a tweak to the tax regime here, slightly improved public sector borrowing figures there, icing on the cake. But in the real world the UK economy, after two years of coalition economics, is becalmed.