Osborne shouldn’t spend the extra money

Lucky old George Osborne. The British economy is not in “meltdown,” but churning out tax revenue like a fruit machine. Figures out from the ONS today show that the tax haul for January alone was £58.4 billion – pushing the public finances into a surplus £3.7 billion for that month (an almighty £3.6 billion more than expected). If this rate continues (no reason why not, seeing as we’re all getting drunk on Mervyn King’s underpriced debt again), then Citi estimates he will have £8 billion more to play with than expected in the current financial year. So what will he do?

Osborne’s decision will tell us plenty about what type of Chancellor he is. When we say that he has £8 billion to play with, we mean that his overspend is £140 billion rather than £148 billion. It’s still an abysmal situation (and only marginally better than Darling would have managed).