DOUBTLESS Chancellor George Osborne will try and fail to cover his smug arrogance with a veneer of mock humility and modest upbeat realism when he delivers his Autumn Statement tomorrow.

He will brush off Labour accusations that he is failing yet again to meet the government's deficit reduction targets.

He may even be cheeky enough to point out that shadow chancellor Ed Balls should be congratulating him for meeting Labour's more modest targets instead.

More likely, the Chancellor will point to those official statistics which show that the economy is growing more rapidly than in most other advanced capitalist countries, that unemployment is falling and that wages are at last outstripping inflation.

No matter that his austerity programme choked off recovery shortly after the coalition took office - like Labour's probably would have done too.

Or that too many of the jobs being created are part-time, precarious or so low-paid that they have to be subsidised by state benefits and tax credits.

Or that inflation calculations do not fully reflect the costs incurred by most working-class households.

Or that the average wage figures are skewed by high earnings at the top and by the exclusion of workers in small firms where unions are often non-existent.

While the Chancellor may express regret that the public-sector finance deficit is not falling as forecast, he will point out that his government has nonetheless cut it by a third since 2010.

Almost certainly he will blame stagnation in the eurozone for the Treasury's disappointing tax receipts, suddenly remembering that not every economic adversity can be laid at the door of the last Labour government.

Of course, Osborne will make the most of recycled commitments to boost spending on the NHS and transport infrastructure, while insisting that austerity must continue for the sake of the country and its economy.

This will not mean that recent tax cuts for the rich will be reversed, nor that next April's scheduled cut in corporation tax on big business profits will be cancelled.

Thus the Autumn Statement will reassure the financial markets that the government's strategy will continue.

Just because targets have been missed as the national debt grows, there will be no jitters when it comes to the value of sterling or government bonds.

That's because Britain's ruling class, centred as it is on the City of London, knows that austerity has never been primarily about meeting fiscal targets. Rather, it has been about restoring the rate of profit and enriching the wealthy, not least through privatising public services centrally and locally and channelling vast amounts of public money into subsidies for big business in the banking, transport and nuclear industries.

Shadow chancellor Balls can blather away to his heart's content about high energy prices, record low levels of housebuilding, growing child poverty and ever busier foodbanks.

But unless he unveils policies to impose fair taxation on the capitalist monopolies, direct private capital into research and development, raise public-sector pay and welfare benefits, legislate for a living wage and take key sectors of the economy into democratic public ownership, his response tomorrow will sound as hollow as it did this time last year.

Britain still has the sixth-biggest economy in the world and the second or third-richest capitalist class.

That's an ample economic and financial platform from which Labour could launch a programme for economic modernisation and social justice.