The public sector finance statistics are out and the headline figure is a very small (£300mn) fall in the deficit in the financial year 2012/13 over 2011/12. That said, Left Foot Forward is reporting that Sky’s Ed Conway has noticed that if you exclude various special factors the deficit may actually be up by a small amount .

To an extent these minor details don’t really matter – the broad picture is that the deficit is roughly the same as it was last year and is expected to stay at that level this year .

Jonathan Portes has provided the most accurate claim that the Government can make :

We reduced the deficit by a third in our first two years in government, mostly by massive cuts to public investment, which we now understand were a big mistake and have damaged the economy. We’ve also now realised that trying to reduce the deficit further while the economy isn’t growing is self-defeating, so we’re not even going to try to get back on track until it does grow. We won’t miss our fiscal targets, since we no longer really have any. If the IMF understood that we’re not really going anywhere, perhaps they would stop telling us to change course.

Today’s figures don’t really tell us anything new. In fact, I would argue that the most interesting data in today’s release is the information that is not contained. Because whilst the overall deficit numbers have become an issue of political controversy,...