Financial commentators have been busy debating whether the Treasury's independent economic forecaster, the Office for Budget Responsibility, was deliberately being overly pessimistic in its Autumn Statement assessments, in compensation for previous growth forecasts, which proved far too high of the mark.

Underpinning government spending plans, Treasury forecasts – independent or otherwise – are customarily revered and feared, as if engraved from some holy mount or spouted from a fume-filled oracular cave.