Tumbling British exports and an increase in European imports means that the UK’s trade deficit with the EU hit an all time high of £23 billion between November and January.

The trade deficit – the value of exports minus the value of imports – is crucial for measuring British businesses overall performance overseas.

Meanwhile, British exports to the continent are at their lowest since 2009. Divided between the 28 EU member states you get an average gap of over £3 billion per each common market member. Merkel might not want a free trade agreement, but German businesses will… 

Buried away in the ONS’ official data is an increase in EU imports of £674 million in January, while British exports rose a paltry £12 million. This includes a massive £300 million import bung for the Netherlands, while flagging economies Italy and Spain were able to flog us £100 million worth of pasta and sangria each.

They need us more than we need them…

Yesterday global stock markets passed the technical point where the world is defined as being in a global bear market. It is likely that problems in financial markets will soon be reflected in the real economy, property transaction volumes are already tailing off in a way that suggests we are near to the top of a property bubble. George Osborne promised to fix the roof when the sun was shining, as the moment of truth arrives, has he?

The stand out success of the British economy has been job creation and falling unemployment. Welfare reform driving people back to work and flexible labour markets largely explain that phenomena. The public finances have not been re-balanced, according to the IMF the UK deficit gap is the worst in the G7 and among the worst in Europe. Worse than even Greece.

Osborne has missed every single deficit target he has set himself. He asked us to judge him on how well he tackled the deficit, well he missed his balanced budget target for 2015, he’ll miss his new adjusted target for 2016 and his overall balanced budget target for 2020. If the global economy derails the likely knock on effect will mean even higher deficits.

Despite all this Osborne indulges in squandermania, allowing him to wander the country in hi-viz and hard hats for photo opportunities that will be the pictorial backdrop for his premiership campaign. There are it is famously said two types of Chancellor; those that get out in time and those that don’t. Unfortunately for George, time has run out…

Bloomberg’s Rob Hutton is reporting that Danny Alexander, the currently unemployed former Chief Secretary to the Treasury, is in the running to join China’s new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. The Treasury is said to be putting forward Alexander for a seat on the bank’s board. It is not yet, Guido understands, a done deal… 

Joining the Beijing-based bank’s board would be a lucrative reward for Alexander, of whom George Osborne recently said he had “a lot of time for and respect for Danny”. As well as his board fees it would open up a lucrative future career in high finance in booming Asia. Sir Danny has come a long way in the decade since he was a press officer for the Cairngorms National Park…

Rock star former Greek finance minister and self confessed “unapologetic Marxist” Yanis Varoufakis used his slot on Question Time last night to compliment George Osborne for not actually implementing austerity.

“I don’t believe that we need an alternative to austerity because austerity is not an option. And indeed, I’m going to give a compliment to George Osborne and to the Tory government, it’s going to create some consternation I think in the Tory party. He hasn’t really practiced austerity, he’s talked about austerity, he did a little bit of it and then it didn’t work. He killed off this nascent recovery after 2009 with the little bit of austerity he did and he stopped, and indeed I can assure you that in discussions I have with good friends of mine in the Tory party, they have been very supportive to us here in Greece and to me personally in our struggle to end austerity in Greece.”

Varoufakis is right, Osborne jacked up welfare spending by £28 billion during his first four years on the job and is still overspending by £2 billion a week. In office Varoufakis, a socialist Greek finance minister, was more of a deficit hawk than the Conservative British Chancellor, Osborne’s austerity is only rhetorical, he is currently running a higher deficit than Greece…

ONS numbers out today show that public sector net borrowing was £9.4 billion in June,  so the government is overspending by a mere £2 billion-a-week. So much for austerity…

Treasury Questions – coming up this morning – will be a chance to ask the austerity Chancellor how he is doing on the deficit compared to other finance ministers:

Of the OECD’s industrialised nations only Japan currently has a worse deficit, financially chastened Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain are currently showing more fiscal discipline than the Chancellor. George’s illusion is permitted by the financial markets because of a combination of QE (money priniting) and the fact that Osborne talks a good book when it comes to austerity. Though the rhetoric can sometimes fail him when he’s questioned by the likes of Kay Burley. 

Building HS2 on £50 billion of borrowed money, renewing Trident on borrowed money, borrowing billions to subsidise EU competitors, borrowing billions that end up aiding third world dictator’s offshore bank accounts… It all mounts up…

After the higher than they hoped damages awarded to Mirror phone hacking victims last week the struggling newspaper group admitted that “costs of settling claims is likely to be higher than previously anticipated we are increasing our provision to deal with matters arising from phone hacking by £16 million. This is in addition to the £12 million provided in 2014.” So the Mirror group has gone from denying that there was any hacking at all, to putting aside £12 million and now more than doubling the provision to £28 million…  

City investors are still worried that this is nowhere near enough and that the final figure will be nearer £100 million, the shares have been trading down since the ruling with £30 million knocked off the capitalisation this week. There is some question as to if the company will be able to pay a dividend…