Guido is glad to see his continued coverage of the OBR’s credibility deficit brought up in the Commons. Tory backbencher Greg Smith challenged Sunak at PMQs to give us a “better system of financial modelling so we can get taxes lower” instead of relying on “habitually wrong” OBR forecasts. Smith is right that “accurate and robust modelling is required” to plan policies. Just last week the OBR chairman blamed Sunak and Hunt for inaccuracies in forecasts and warned the next set might swing again by a whopping £30 billion. Meanwhile Labour pledges to give it the final say on economic policy…

Despite a Downing Street insider only this week telling Guido that they recognised there was a problem with the groupthink of the OBR’s self-selecting personnel, Sunak decided to swerve criticism of the OBR and praised its “transparency and independence” before patting himself on the back for his Autumn Statement. Politicians are still bending over backwards for their quango overlords…