One of the mini-budget’s maxi-consequences has been to boost the reputation of opposition economists. They said the Chancellor’s fiscal event would be a disaster and outcomes have proven them absolutely right.

At the Treasury select committee this morning, Angela Eagle invited Torsten Bell of the Resolution Foundation to remember how angry he was at his pre-announcement appearance before the committee and how much more angry he must be now.

True, Torsten was alight, he was blazing – but it looked more like delight than disgust.
“Maybe you could have got away with it in more benign times,” he said and then let slip his commanding belief: “It wouldn’t have been a good idea at any time.”

This peloton of economists are united. The growth targets are unachievable, and there is “no plausible route by which tax cuts lead to a 1% increase in GDP.”

They may be right, they may not. It’s worth remembering that economists have historically failed to pick any of the turning points in the economy, and that 364 of the blighters wrote to the Times warning against Geoffrey Howe’s disastrous 1981 budget.

The economy immediately took off.

If that happens again, if the animal spirits of the economy pick up in the unpredictable way that they do – the dismal scientists will look even more dismal.