The chancellor’s plans, announced in his Mansion House speech, for “permanent budget surpluses” are nothing more than an attempt to outmanoeuvre his opponents. They have no basis in economics. Osborne’s proposals are not fit for the complexity of a modern 21st-century economy and, as such, they risk a liquidity crisis that could also trigger banking problems, a fall in GDP, a crash, or all three.
I don’t think that Osborne is completely economically illiterate, he just wants to create traps for the shadow chancellor. Deficit is the bad word. If another politician said that they couldn’t promise to avoid a deficit, the Tory press would be all over them.