The coronavirus outbreak has made the budget irrelevant

This emergency demands good judgment, not the usual obsession with debt and deficit levels

Seldom has a British government's budget been rendered so out of date and so irrelevant as Rishi Sunak's first.

One of the best indicators of this was provided in his post-budget evidence to the Treasury select committee last week by Robert Chote, the much-respected chairman of the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR). The OBR is the independent watchdog on government spending and taxation plans - the setting-up of which was one of the few acts of Chancellor George Osborne of which I approved.

Despite the crisis, the Brexiters are hellbent on not seeking an extension to the negotiations with the EU