Politicians like to claim that there are fiscal rules that they must follow. There are, in fact, no such thing as fiscal rules. Every fiscal rule has been created by a politician in an attempt to demonstrate their own supposed competence in managing the economy for which they are responsible.
When, as is often the case, a politician discovers that this supposed demonstration of competence is not possible because outcomes conflict with what they predicted and their rule is at risk of being broken they have a habit of rewriting declare rules to suit the new circumstances that have arisen. They then use this new rule as the basis of their claim to competence in the future even though they have failed to meet their own rules in the past.
All fiscal rules are in that case actually fiscal choices rather than rules. The suggestion by politicians that they have no choice but follow these rules is, in that case, misleading. The reality is that they have chosen to do so. They could just as easily have chosen some other objective instead.
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