The International Monetary Fund does not normally respond to mere journalists. But its staff have explicitly rejected my arguments on the pace of fiscal consolidation in the UK. On one point – the need for a fiscal “plan B” – the IMF takes my side in the argument with the government. This is no small victory, not least because its latest report on the UK reads, in other respects, as if dictated to it by the Treasury.

The newly released report contains a special section entitled “To tighten, or not to tighten – UK fiscal policy in the public debate”, which cites several of my columns. This notes that critics of the planned tightening make three main points: first, “there is no guarantee that other sectors will continue expanding while the government retrenches” and “additional monetary stimulus may not be powerful enough to offset this risk”; second, “excessive tightening may even destroy supply capacity”; and, third, “long-term UK interest rates show no sign of market panic, and commitments to future fiscal consolidation are more important than immediate cuts.”

The report at least states that “many of these points have merit”. But it make four counter-arguments: first, “although fiscal tightening has already started, there are signs of economic recovery led by the private sector”; second, “while there is a risk to underestimating potential [capacity], there is also the opposite risk – of belatedly discovering higher-than expected structural deficits and greater inflationary pressure”; third, “a glance at current bond yields does not do justice to the risk of a sovereign funding crisis – a low-probability, but very-high-impact scenario for the UK”; and, finally, “critics downplay the importance of political credibility: promises of future consolidation alone are unlikely to be persuasive, especially once they reach beyond the current term of parliament.”