The government's plan is working. Today's ONS statistics show yet again that growth is accelerating, building on the IMF's positive 2013 figures released last week. Last quarter, employment increased by the largest amount on record and the unemployment rate continues to fall.

All this is happening amid a determined drive to reduce the deficit – driven to record highs by the financial crisis and Labour's structural commitment to borrowing.

We're entering a virtuous feedback loop – fiscal discipline has helped to build economic confidence, and confidence is driving further growth. According to ComRes, 43% of the population now expect the economy to improve, compared to only 31% a year ago.

That is George Osborne's most remarkable achievement. After the crash put people out of work, closed businesses and shook the biggest financial institutions to their foundations, a collapse in confidence was to be expected, but we were also left with a deeper form of economic shell-shock.

The rote-repeated promise of "an end to boom and bust", the illusion that we could live beyond our means forever and the mantra that the banks were "too big to fail" had turned out to be untrue. Gordon Brown's economic Truman Show had been revealed to be a flimsy façade.

No wonder investors and consumers were wary when the coalition started to address the mess Labour left behind.

The only way for Osborne to regain trust and rebuild confidence was the step-by-step process of doing the right thing – sticking to his guns on deficit reduction, cutting taxes for companies and workers alike and, most importantly, rejecting the dire warnings issued by the fans of the mythical plan B.

Perhaps the only people not happy about today's news are Ed Balls and his fellow miserablists. At each stage they have predicted the worst – millions more out of work, a triple-dip recession and even economic uncertainty caused by the prospect of an EU referendum. At each stage they have been completely wrong.

Meanwhile, under President François Hollande, the disastrous implementation of plan B has seen French unemployment reach a record high.

Labour should be as glad as the rest of us to have dodged that bullet – a little shamefaced, but glad their scaremongering about austerity has proved to be unfounded.

In reality, they are nothing of the sort. Balls is as red-faced and defiant as ever, and seems to view the word "sorry" as an expletive. Now economic reality has denied him the opportunity to talk about recessions and soaring unemployment, he has simply moved on to the cost of living as if nothing ever happened.

Of course, it's a problem that prices are outstripping wages and that youth and long-term unemployment remain stubbornly high, but until Labour acknowledges its mistakes its solutions will remain fundamentally flawed.

Instead of seeking out a new topic to grouse about each time his previous gloomy warning has been disproven, Balls should join in the search for positive solutions to the nation's problems. He should be looking at ways to make it more affordable to create jobs, or to reduce the impact of government policy on living costs.

This is a major test of the shadow chancellor's character. Is his pride more important than Britain's economic success? So far, his behaviour suggests so.