Government’s siege mentality is likely to deliver a budget disaster

FOUR cabinet meetings in a week. Members of the government snowed under with paper.

Civil servants scurrying to and fro, their knitted brows and hushed corridor meetings all suggesting the imminent collapse of the heavens. Calculators working overtime as the cuts are totted up. An air of emergency hanging over the whole thing. Ministers telling each other the time has come to be tough. Really tough.

It’s a recipe for disaster. They are almost bound to make political decisions that will be looked on in years to come as acts of folly — and will probably be judged to have been unnecessary.