Fraser Nelson

BBC Newsnight sent a crew to North Wiltshire today, to interview voters about the budget. Gladys Pek Yue Macrae, a former Conservative Party branch chairman, said she is fed up because she expected Tory policies to be the result of a Tory majority. Instead, she said, “I find I have a socialist Chancellor. Conservatives are for small government and each individual being responsible for their own destiny. Why do we have a sugar tax? If people should not be eating sugar, then they should not eat sugar.” As her husband, Alan Macrae, put put it: “Surely Conservatism is all about freedom of choice? It’s not about the government telling you what you should and should not do.

Chart 1: Growth downgraded. Not by much, but Osborne sails so close to the wind that every negative revision tends to knock him off course. Chart 2: So Osborne's new debt target is missed already. He said the debt/GDP ratio would fall every year: a target he took right to the limit in his Autumn Statement. The ratio is rising this year - again, not by much, but this is rather embarrassing for him as made such a fuss about this target. Chart 3: Deficit picture worsens. Again. Which happens pretty much every time Osborne stands up to make a financial statement. Here's his latest plan, versus his original.

It's the Ides of March today, and there are pitifully few signs of a Labour plot. I was on ITV's The Agenda last night with Chuka Umunna, one of the putative successors to Jeremy Corbyn, who was teased by Tom Bradby about his ambitions. He came out with the usual hedged denials ("there's not a vacancy.,, I've said I would never say never") but then came out with the rationale for ousting Corbyn. The problem: most Labour members were not members this time last year. The party has been taken over by Corbynistas and while Labour MPs could technically change the leadership it's harder to change the membership. Chuka agreed- but then gave the democratic case for deposing Corbyn, in defiance of the wishes of party members. .

Angela Merkel continues to reap the whirlwind. In this weekend's elections Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) has emerged as the fastest-growing political insurgent party since 1945. It has managed to enter all three state parliaments - with over 10pc of the vote in Baden-Württemberg, Rhineland-Palatinate and almost a quarter of the vote in Saxony-Anhalt, more than double the centre-left SPD. It focused its campaign as a protest against Merkel’s migrant policy, a policy that paid off. Its success is more than just another example of Europeans letting off steam.

The Chancellor has today declared a ceasefire on Middle Britain: he will not go ahead with his planned pensions raid, where he was intending to erode the relief due to upper-rate taxpayers. The Times splashes on the news, and says that "pressing ahead with the plans may well have dented his popularity within the party as a leadership battle approaches." If this was his motive, it was not without foundation: the tax credits debacle, his Google gaffe and, most recently, his positioning himself as a EU cheerleader has not endeared him to the Tory members who will decide who succeeds David Cameron. The bookmakers show his odds plunging (below) and have today cut his odds on being sacked by Christmas to 6-1. Osborne has recovered before (see above graph) and can recover again.

The worldwide Uber debate is quite helpful in that it forces politicians to answer a simple question: are you for the people, or the vested interests? Sadiq Khan, the Labour candidate for Mayor, declared his hand today in an LBC phone-in. Challenged by a (Scottish) black cab driver about his views on Uber, he said: There are almost 100,000 private hire vehicles in London. Over the last three years there has been, roughly speaking, a 10,000 increase in the number of private hire vehicles. The black taxis are now as low as 23,000, for the first time in a generation, there are fewer people doing the knowledge. And I’m afraid the mistake was made a couple of years ago when TFL allowed the Uber taxis to come on stream. Why are there so many more private hire taxis?

If Boris Johnson had behaved and backed David Cameron's ‘in’ campaign, he would have been foreign secretary by the summer. Instead, he chose to join Michael Gove in the ‘out’ campaign - informing the Prime Minister by text message at 4.40pm shortly before informing the reporters who gathered around his house shortly afterwards. So what does this mean for the race, and do we now have a Tory leadership contest running in parallel to the EU Referendum campaign? James Forsyth, Isabel Hardman and I discuss this in our latest podcast:- Listen to more episodes of the Spectator podcast here and click here to subscribe through iTunes.

As ministers roll into No10 in front of the cameras, reporters have noticed the absence of one Boris de Pfeffel Johnson. It turns out that the Prime Minister has convened a meeting of the normal Cabinet, rather than a ‘political Cabinet.’ A minor distinction, but it does mean no Boris Johnson – who is a member of the latter organisation, but not the former. Now, of course, you can argue that it takes a normal Cabinet to approve the deal on behalf of the government. But friends of Boris had been hoping for a political Cabinet, at which everyone would say their piece, followed by a rubber stamp at the Cabinet. And that way, Boris could seen as part of the team.

The Chancellor certainly will have plenty to boast about in his next Budget. Today's figures show an employment rate of 74.1pc, the highest ever recorded in Britain - better than Nigel Lawson's record, better than anyone's. Tax cuts and welfare reform have proved a potent combination. This makes it harder for Osborne to sustain his narrative about a scary "cocktail of risk", part of the general strategy of keeping voters fearful ahead of the EU referendum. With record employment and zero inflation - a striking contrast with the Eurozone - things really could be a lot worse. Against such a backdrop, voters might well wonder what else Britain could achieve by striking out on its own.