YOU got the impression Philip Hammond could have done with some of the expensive stuff from the wallpaper company of predecessor George Osborne’s family as he attempted to cover the cracks in the Conservatives’ economic record yesterday.

The Chancellor, as he continued the tradition of patriotic economic remarks that has typified the Conservative Government since 2010, seemed to signal a preference for a red, white and blue colour scheme as he took on the role of painter and decorator.

Mr Hammond talked about building “on Britain’s great global success story”. Exiting the European Union was addressed only fleetingly at the start of his Budget speech. But Brexit was very much the elephant in the chamber.

And the Chancellor’s attempts to paint a rosy economic picture did not blend at all with the latest batch of forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility. The OBR highlighted the fact it had lowered its UK growth projections for every year of the forecast period, all the way out to the early-2020s.

It is worth noting many of the cracks that Mr Hammond had to paper and gloss over started with Mr Osborne’s austerity, which choked off UK economic growth and ensured the public finances, which were hit very badly by the global financial crisis, got into far worse shape still.

Mr Hammond talked about “Labour’s Great Recession”. However, while much of the UK’s current economic malaise can be attributed to the Conservatives, the 2008/09 recession was fairly and squarely the result of a global financial crisis that had little, if anything, to do with Labour.

The economic impact of public spending cuts and Brexit-related uncertainty was highlighted by the OBR in the context of its forecasts of slowing growth.

This is a tale of continuing woe, with the latest growth downgrades fairly dramatic even for these turbulent times.

Growth is now projected by the OBR to slow from 1.8 per cent in 2016 to 1.5 per cent this year, before decelerating to 1.4 per cent in 2018. It is then projected to slow even further, to 1.3 per cent in 2019. Growth is forecast to be just 1.3 per cent again in 2020, before picking up only modestly to 1.5 per cent in 2021 and 1.6 per cent the following year.

The 2017 growth forecast was two per cent at the time of the March Budget. The 2018 expansion projection was 1.6 per cent in March, having been cut from 1.7 per cent at that stage. The growth prediction for 2019 was reduced from 2.1 per cent to 1.7 per cent in March, so has now been cut sharply twice in little more than eight months.

And the 2020 expansion forecast was cut at the time of the Spring Budget from 2.1 per cent to 1.9 per cent. In March, 2021 growth was forecast at two per cent.

In a speech in August 2013, Bank of England Governor Mark Carney noted the UK’s historical average annual rate of growth was about 2.75 per cent. The UK economy has been way adrift of this annual expansion rate in all but one year since the Conservatives came to power in 2010.

The UK economy grew by 1.7 per cent in 2010, and by 1.5 per cent in each of the following two years. It then expanded by 2.1 per cent in 2013. In 2014, the UK did achieve growth of 3.1 per cent, but expansion then slowed to 2.3 per cent in 2015, before its further sharp deceleration last year.

And, as the impact of last year’s Brexit vote has hit home with sterling weakness fuelling inflation and sending real pay falling again, UK growth has slowed sharply this year. In the three months to September, gross domestic product grew by just 0.4 per cent, having increased by an even-weaker 0.3 per cent in each of the opening two quarters of this year.

Not surprisingly, given the weaker growth projections and in spite of Mr Hammond’s attempts to reaffirm the Tories’ fiscal responsibility, the OBR’s forecasts of public sector net borrowing have ballooned still further.

The Chancellor seemed keen to highlight the fact the new forecast for net borrowing in the current fiscal year was down by £8.4 billion from what the OBR projected at the time of the March Budget, at £49.9bn. However, he did not break his stride to dwell on huge like-for-like increases in the forecasts of net borrowing over the 2019/20 to 2021/22 fiscal years.

Taking into account changes in methodology, the net borrowing projection for 2019/20 has been raised from a restated £16.3bn in March to £34.7bn, while the forecast for the following fiscal year has been increased from £15.5bn to £32.8bn. The net borrowing prediction for 2021/22 is up from £11bn to £30.1bn on the same basis. And the OBR projects net borrowing will be a still very sizeable £25.6bn in 2022/23. The public sector net borrowing projection for 2018/19 is up from a restated £35.5bn in March to £39.5bn. On this like-for-like basis, the fall in the 2017/18 borrowing forecast cited by Mr Hammond would be £5.6bn.

It was hardly surprising to see Mr Hammond focus on trying to push technological advancement in the UK economy, given the latest growth forecast downgrades had much to do with consistently disappointing productivity.

The OBR noted yesterday that it had, on average, revised trend productivity growth down by 0.7 percentage points a year, as “the remarkable period of post-crisis weakness extends”.

The independent forecasting body, set up by Mr Osborne, observed the Office for National Statistics estimated output per hour was currently 21 per cent below an extrapolation of its pre-crisis trend.

It added: “By the beginning of 2023 we expect this to have risen to 27 per cent.”

The crux of the matter is that, in spite of the Conservatives’ bullish talk, the UK economic outlook remains miserable, and particularly so now with Brexit looming over everything. The International Monetary Fund last week contrasted the UK’s weaker growth outlook with a stronger picture in the eurozone.

And the big problem with just papering over cracks is they tend to re-appear fairly quickly, premium wallpaper or not. In this case, given the UK’s foundations are being rocked by the economic folly of Brexit, the cracks look almost certain to get much bigger.