George Osborne is braced to admit this month that the scale of Britain's economic slowdown, demonstrated yesterday by youth unemployment spiralling to more than 1 million, means he will be unable to meet his main deficit reduction target before the next election.
It is now expected that the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) will declare at the time of Osborne's autumn statement on 29 November that the downturn's impact is more permanent than thought and the government may not be able to meet its commitment to eliminate the structural deficit – the part of the deficit unaffected by growth – by 2014-15, as he predicted in the June 2010 budget.
In any case, we know what the obvious thing to do is. Huzzah!