Borrowing rise makes budget deficit target look shaky again

For the current year as a whole, the chancellor is expecting the deficit to be cut by 23% to 55.5bn, so this has been a pretty unimpressive start to the year

George Osborne could be history by the weekend so it is easy to see why the chancellor might have paid less attention than usual to the latest figures charting progress in reducing Britain's budget deficit.

But if the financial markets are right in their assumption that the UK will vote to stay in the EU on Thursday, it won't be long before investors start to focus on some sticky economic problems that have not gone away while politics has been dominated by Europe.

Related: Brexit uncertainty hits plans to cut budget deficit