Smoke, mirrors and George’s marvellous £27bn medicine

Economic pundits may be a clever bunch, but the chancellor has fooled them all over the past few weeks

Robert Chote, chairman of the Office for Budget Responsibility, used to be director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Paul Johnson, who used to look after public services at the Treasury (among many other things) was a colleague of Sharon White, who is married to Robert Chote. Five years hence, for all I know, White may be director of the IFS, Johnson could be chairing the OBR, and Chote could be boss of Ofcom (White's current berth). Or any of them could be economics editor of the FT, where Chote made his name.

This, in short, is a close-knit world of similar and similarly able economists, not some canyon of conflict between OBR and IFS. Doors revolve constantly. Forecasts are continually refined (or changed) by the same sort of independent analysts. Which leads to one observation that, gently, the assembled commentocracy of press and broadcasting failed to make last week amid the pother about U-turns, discontinued austerity and abracadabra.

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