Can George Osborne pass his own 13 tests?

Before George Osborne took to wearing hard hats and hi-vis jackets, he used to revel in his status as a political insider. In 2004, he wrote a piece for The Spectator setting out his model for forecasting the result of UK General Elections. Adapted from an academic model for predicting US Presidential Elections, it set out the ’13 keys to Number 10’ and argued that if a government held six of these it would win re-election.

Here are Osborne’s 13 tests and how the government is doing on them:

1. Real per capita economic growth during the parliament equals or exceeds the mean growth during the previous two parliaments. Yes: the coalition will just hit this target if the OBR’s forecasts are correct.

2. The economy is not in recession during the election campaign. Yes: the economy might be slowing a bit but it definitely won’t be in recession during the campaign

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