Rachel Reeves’ Spring statement this week had the curious characteristic of being both deeply worrying whilst being almost entirely devoid of content.

I will praise the Chancellor for one key decision – we now only have one budget or “fiscal event” a year. Under George Osborne we were treated to two – sometimes even three – performances at the dispatch box every year announcing changes to tax and spending plans. It often made for great political theatre but not typically for good policy-making. Osborne would often pull a surprise “rabbit from the hat” (such as a major hike in the minimum wage) in an effort to wrongfoot his opposite number and leave them discombobulated as they prepared their response.

Reeves has downgraded her Spring statement to merely being a commentary on the overall state of the economy without there being any tax and spend announcements.

There is no rabbit. There is barely even a hat.

Instead, the Chancellor rattled through the forecasts from the OBR and attempted to show that her plan was working. What her plan actually consists of is a mystery to most observers. Nevertheless, Reeves is determined to crunch the numbers, ladle on some assumptions and seek to show that the public finances will be in some sort of stable and credible state in a few years’ time. The nirvana of a balanced budget is apparently always a few years away and never actually arrives, of course.

Last Autumn, Reeves’ budget was derailed by the OBR releasing all the details of it before she got to her feet. This week the carefully prepared OBR figures had already been rendered into a complete fiction by the unfolding events in the Middle East. We can’t be sure of the exact impact the Iran conflict will have on growth or inflation – but we can be certain that any forecast which hasn’t even considered the impact will be woefully inadequate.

The debate in Parliament consists of arguments about measurements to a fraction of a decimal point when any reasonable person knows the margin of error is simply vast. You may as well try and predict how many goals will be scored and at exactly what times in the FA Cup final in 2030. In fact, last April I suggested some alternative forecast models to compete with the OBR just to show how ludicrous attempts to predict the economic future with this degree of precision really are.

However, I have reached the conclusion that the way the OBR sets the terms of our economic policy-making is not merely ridiculous but actually dangerous. We get bogged down in the utter trivia (whether the Chancellor’s fiscal headroom is going to be £21bn, £22bn or £23bn in four years’ time) and don’t turn our attention to the fundamental unsustainability in state spending.

All of the major trends (rather than the trivial precise forecasts) point in one direction – that if we keep spending as we are then we will go bust. Welfare spending is ballooning and health spending is the same. The eye-watering public sector pensions liability is being left for some future government to deal with. After years of under-investment, our armed forces are in an embarrassing state but there appears to be no money available to address this. Taxes are at such high levels that it is impossible to squeeze more money from an embattled private sector which is so heavily penalised that economic growth on a per capita basis is basically non-existent.

To even get our finances into some sort of remotely sustainable state, we probably need to find annual savings in the order of £150bn or more. How we do that in a remotely fair and reasonable way should be dominating our debate on fiscal policy. Instead, a barely functioning quango, the OBR, means we get trapped into a pointless discussion about decimal points, jots, dots and commas.

This is yet another reason why our machinery of government needs a fundamental reset.

Keep the flag of freedom flying!