Budget bloopers – five graphs that George Osborne won't be sharing on Wednesday

George Osborne is the most political of Chancellors, and his Budget today will doubtless read like a party political broadcast. The economic momentum is on his side: soaring employment, plunging inflation, fuel prices down. But he has had more trouble with the public finances than he expected (as things turned out he could afford it, as global borrowing rates have plunged). But in the interests of balance, here are a few economic bloopers that he won’t be boasting about.

1. The deficit plan: the single biggest disappointment of his five years. Once, he defined himself by his ability to abolish the structural deficit by the 2015 election. Now, it’ll be 2018-19 before the books are balanced. He has overseen many successes: borrowing costs are way lower, employment is way higher. But he fought the last election denouncing Labour for going too slow on deficit reduction. He has ended up going far, far slower.

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2. His ‘long term’ economic plan has drifted two years behind schedule as the GDP per capita figures show