In response to an FT article by Janan Ganesh on 14th March 2016, entitled 'Fiscal failure is Osborne’s route to Number 10'
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/28edb360-e9c8-11e5-888e-2eadd5fbc4a4.html#ixzz42tklnala
"This, then, is Mr Osborne’s dilemma. His best chance of succeeding Mr Cameron is to fail in his fiscal mission. Flunking his targets — above all, the surplus due in 2019-20 — wounds him less than the slog of meeting them"
If Mr Osborne thinks this country will arrive in 2019-20 without having entered a recession then he is too dumb to be leader...or Chancellor. Clearly he is not that dumb. The people who put economic projections under his nose that show a continuation of the recent trend, may be that dumb, but it's more likely that they are also in denial.
Whether or not Mr Osborne becomes the next leader of the Conservative Party, and whether or not the Conservative party wins the next election does not depend one iota on whether he eliminates the deficit - he won't. He will be judged on how he responds to the next bust, and whether he looks like a man who has learned something and knows how to tell the 'truth'.
If he has any real chance of being fit to be Prime Minister, the question being posed here will seem absurd - He will choose to do what he believes is right for the country not what is good for his career. The fact that we have an article about this is symptomatic of the rot in our politics - integrity over ambition is as rare as hen's teeth.
I doubt he is made of the right stuff. If he was, he would stand out far more than he does from the sea of self-entitlement and mediocrity that surrounds him.