Now that the dust is settling on the election results, the next big challenge for the new government is what to do about the public finances and in particular how to sell whatever it is planning to a sceptical electorate.

After all, despairing that they would never win, the Conservatives let loose a veritable flock of chickens in unfunded tax and spending pledges which have come home to roost. Osborne has now set himself the task of trying to honour these rash promises along with working out how to cut £12bn from welfare and add in £8bn for the NHS by July in an Emergency Budget, even though he could have given himself another four months to the Autumn Statement.

The question is whether austerity is history. Contrary to 2010 the electorate thinks it has come and gone; the Treasury and anyone else with a rudimentary understanding of economics thinks it has not. Osborne’s 2010 austerity ‘Plan A’ was knocked off course by the eurozone crisis and the global rise in energy costs.