David Maddox: With the Chancellor on a sticky wicket, he had better play his autumn statement with a straight bat

IF THE Chancellor George Osborne is looking for inspiration for his difficult autumn statement next week then he perhaps should look for it in the Asian sub-continent.

This time, though, it is not the growth of the Indian economy or its potential for boosting businesses in Britain, rather Mr Osborne could find few better examples of how he needs to proceed than the English cricket captain Alastair Cook, who has just led his team to victory in the second Test there.

The essential qualities of Cook are that, as a batsman, he is dull, plays safe, but in doing so provides the backbone of the English team and has scored more centuries than anyone else.

And this is what the autumn statement needs to be after a Budget in March which, in batting terms, was the equivalent of going in swinging at everything without bothering to look at the ball.

Inevitably, in March, Mr Osborne and the cricket fanatic Lib Dem Chief Secretary, Danny Alexander, were caught out. Instead of knocking their critics for six they performed six U-turns on charity, caravan, pasties, church, skips and fuel levies and duties. It was the first Budget to effectively become a consultation exercise.

So when Mr Osborne gets up next week, what most of his own Tory party will want is something safe that does not leave them having to spend weeks defending a government mess followed by U-turns.

The good news for him is that the bad news has been well trailed. It seems likely now that he will have to admit that his crucial debt borrowing target will not be met.

What is probably also likely is that he will not, as the Institute for Fiscal Studies has suggested he might need to do, put VAT up to 25 per cent. Not least because his Lib Dem partners and many Tories will not accept it.

In the end, all the Chancellor has to do is to remember one simple fact, which is that the only people he needs to keep happy in the short term are the international markets and the credit rating agencies – namely Moody’s, Standard and Poor, and Fitch.

These agencies have known for some time now that the debt target will probably not be met, and yet they have maintained the UK’s prized triple A credit rating.

What they have consistently said is that they want the UK to stick to its plan, and the coalition to stick together. Rather helpfully, the one thing that has kept the coalition stuck together through thick and thin is that economic austerity plan. For all Labour’s demands for a plan B, neither the Tories nor the Lib Dems can now abandon plan A because of the political damage it will do them – the possible collapse of the coalition, and, worse, the loss of the triple A credit rating.

So while the news on borrowing will be bad and will provide Mr Osborne with a crisis moment, it may actually be the time for him to knuckle down and just play the situation with a straight bat.