James Moore: No plan B, so Osborne must start tweaking

Outlook: Another day, another dire warning about the eurozone and its baleful effect on the economy. The IMF's chief, Christine Lagarde, talked about a downward spiral reminiscent of the 1930s, which is probably designed to concentrate minds in the chancellories of Europe and probably won't. However, there are still very real dangers. Our Chancellor, George Osborne, might like to think on that. His deficit-reduction plan appears to be on track but yesterday he had the nice frightening number of the national debt hitting £1 trillion to brandish at Labour. It will be trotted out every time he wants to get all macho and insist that there can be no economic plan B.

So, given the IMF has revised UK growth down to 0.6 per cent from 1.6 per cent, why not follow the example of Apple? Instead of calling its new super-phone the iPhone 5, it came up with the iPhone 4s. Mr Osborne could yet prove himself to be more pragmatic (and sensible) than he looks by tweaking his plan A to plan A(s).