The Cameron cabinet is nothing if not obstinate – “determined”, if you like what it is doing. The public spending statement this week by George Osborne, the chancellor, leaves plenty to argue about. But its main object was to rein back spending to a predetermined path.

The days when Labour put its faith in long-term planning and the Conservatives trusted to day-to-day instinct are long gone. To misquote a 19th century chancellor, William Harcourt: “We are all planners now,” which is not much comfort if the plans are based on a mistaken idea of how the economy works – itself a subject of intense debate.

The object of the spending review is to reduce “managed expenditure” – which excludes items such as national debt over which the government has no direct control – from 44 per cent to 42 per cent of gross domestic product over the next two years. This is a much smaller rate of decline than the UK coalition government originally intended. It is nevertheless well down on the 47 per cent level that obtained in 2009-10, the last year of the previous Labour government. Indeed a real cut of 2.7 per cent is planned between the next financial year and the year after. With health and foreign aid ringfenced, the cuts elsewhere in government have to be severe.