Any other business: A lesson for Osborne from my sailing holiday: ignore the shouting and hold your course

In my early twenties I spent memorable holidays crewing on a yacht in the Mediterranean. One afternoon we were entering the creek-like port of Ciudadella in Menorca when we realised that a departing car ferry was heading straight for us, gathering speed. Our entire crew, including me, began hollering uselessly and pleading with the youthful helmsman to take evasive action, while nearby fishermen gesticulated wildly, possibly to suggest that we throw ourselves overboard and swim for it. But our helmsman, wise beyond his years, ordered us to shut up. ‘I have chosen my course,’ he announced calmly, ‘and I intend to hold it.’ So he did, and we passed under the bows of the ferry into the calm of the inner harbour.

It was a life lesson I have never forgotten, and I offer it now to George Osborne. A fortnight before Budget day a flotilla of problems and special-interest pleas bears down on him, the clamour to change course is relentless, the narrow haven of fiscal balance coupled with a return to growth looks not much closer than it did when the coalition came to power. What nerves of steel his task requires.

Take, for example, the price of petrol. With impeccably bad timing, nervousness about Iran has sent pump prices to record highs. A respectable think-tank, the Centre for Economics and Business Research, says a 2.5p cut in fuel duty (currently 58p per litre, plus VAT) would boost consumer spending, add 0.3 per cent to GDP and create 175,000 jobs in a year with no net loss in tax revenues. It would also aid the survival of thousands of small businesses, a point I made here last year ahead of the Chancellor’s autumn statement. And it would take some sting out of the renewed threat of inflation which, contrary to recent official forecasts, now looks more likely to run above target well into 2013.

Osborne did make one concession in the autumn: he deferred a 3p fuel duty rise from January to August this year, and cancelled a 2p ‘inflation increase’ that would have come with it.