T HE CHANCELLOR’S half-yearly statement on the public finances is usually one of the biggest events in the political calendar. Not so on March 13th, when Philip Hammond rose in the House of Commons to deliver his spring statement. The chamber was far from full. Conservative MP s sitting directly behind Mr Hammond checked their phones as he delivered his speech. “I am acutely conscious of the fact that the House has other pressing matters on its mind today,” Mr Hammond began.

Brexit is not just a distraction. It also makes a mockery of the process of fiscal forecasting. The Office for Budget Responsibility , the fiscal watchdog, makes its projections based on current government policy. For now it assumes a smooth exit from the EU on March 29th. Yet after a week of Commons defeats the government looks set to request an extension to the exit date. And although MP s have also voted against a no-deal exit, that is not enough to stop such an outcome happening by accident. Since no one has the foggiest idea how Brexit will pan out, fiscal forecasts are barely worth the paper they are written on.

Yet the government is required to deliver two fiscal updates a year. Mr Hammond also loves his numbers. MP s were therefore treated to the chancellor reeling off forecast after forecast, often with an absurd level of precision. By 2023, Mr Hammond claimed, the economy will have 600,000 more jobs. GDP growth that year will be 1.6%—no more, no less. To pad out the speech the chancellor chucked in a few cheap but crowd-pleasing announcements: an extra £100m ($130m) for the police in 2019-20 to tackle a surge in knife crime, and free sanitary products in secondary schools.