Payback time after election

When you are collecting and spending the better part of £500 billion a year in taxes as this government is, you tend not to worry too much about the month-by-month accounts.

Yet it must have taken all Chancellor Gordon Brown's cool to appear so unruffled by the figures for government borrowing in November. They showed that the gap between what was being spent and what was being raised in taxes - even at the current high levels of extortion - left a gap so wide the Government needed loans of £9.4billion to make ends meet.

In an era when government accounts become ever harder to understand and more politicised, the difference between what is being spent and what is coming in assumes greater importance because it is one of the few figures that cannot be fudged.

But even then the Treasury had a stab at blurring the message. It said the increased winter fuel allowance for pensioners had been paid in November rather than the more normal December. It said some departments which had been slow to spend their budgets earlier in the year were playing catch-up. Most of all, it said - or at least implied - there was nothing to worry about.

And in a way it is right because one month's government statistics are no guide to anything. But what is significant is that at a time when everyone, except the Chancellor apparently, has concerns that government is spending beyond the country's means, the £9 billion had not lost its capacity to shock.

From the International Monetary Fund in Washington to our own National Institute for Economic and Social Research, people were expecting to be worried by our rake's progress. They did not expect to be scared out of their wits by what were, even with Treasury caveats, among the worst figures for 10 years.

Brown obviously takes the view that if he continues to behave as if everything is under control the voters will believe it. Economists and political opponents question his maths and say that either taxes must rise or spending must slow, and they are probably right.

But in the short term they can't lay a glove on him. The public do not see any sign of strain in their day-to-day lives so they pay no heed to the cries of alarm.

Indeed it could take years for the full extent of the current profligacy to become apparent, and to assess the true extent of the indebtedness now being piled up by squandering resources in the public sector. This suits the Chancellor, who will do nothing at this stage in the electoral cycle that could be interpreted as a sign of unease.

Indeed this week's alarming figures should help him because it gets the bad news out early. As long as he throttles back a little on his spending he can make sure the numbers early next year are under ?9 billion and falling - to underline why there is no need to be alarmed and why once again he has proved sceptics wrong.

No one will be able to prove otherwise this side of a May election.