It was all too much for George Osborne. He’d delivered his autumn statement the day before and, rather than receiving the undying thanks of the nation, everyone had been looking carefully at the economic data from the Office for Budget Responsibility and dared to come up with a rather different interpretation to him. After several minutes of questioning by John Humphrys, he finally snapped.
“When I woke up this morning and turned on the Today programme, you had BBC correspondents saying Britain is returning to a George Orwell world of The Road to Wigan Pier,” he said. “That is just such nonsense. I would have thought the BBC would have learned from the last four years that its totally hyperbolic coverage of spending cuts has not been matched by what’s actually happened … ” Just to make sure there was no danger of being misheard, he repeated himself. “What I reject is the totally hyperbolic BBC coverage of spending reductions.”
Radio sets across the country raised their digital eyebrows. Humphrys can be sharp, but he’s no Trot and he’d only been asking the questions everyone else had been thinking. If the BBC had really wanted to give Osborne a hard time, they would have put him up against Vince Cable. The business secretary had earlier been particularly damning about the welfare cuts the chancellor had lined up for the next parliament.
It must have been one of the no food days of his 5-2 diet, because the chancellor was tetchy from the off, taking exception to the way to the government had been described as breaking its promises on immigration and deficit reduction. “Snot fair,” Osborne sulked. “I only promised to make fings a bit betta.” “You were more specific than that,” Humphrys pointed out gently, realising the chancellor had unexpectedly regressed into a stroppy teenager. “Wozzn’t”.
“You’ve increased borrowing,” Humphrys continued. “Yeah but no but yeah but no but it’s a different kind of borrowing yeah,” Osborne replied. “And like the change in stamp duty is because I’m backing aspiration innit.” Why was he giving away money he didn’t have to when there were huge cuts to be made in welfare payments if he was to meet his deficit reduction targets? “Coz I’ve got a plan and it’s a good plan and I’m sticking to it and nobodeez died yeah.” No one he knew, at any rate. By the time he signed off the chancellor had qualified for the under-12 exemption in air passenger tax he had announced the day before.
Osborne had also said he was the first to admit the economy had a long way to go. This was definitely a lie, as Ed Balls had already said so half an hour earlier in an interview with Jim Naughtie. The shadow chancellor had been much more chipper than the previous day when he had only suspected the chancellor might have been economical with the economic data. Now he knew for certain, he was determined to make the most of it. “Massive fiscal problem for George Osborne and the country,” Balls said, trying not to sound too happy about it.
His joy was short-lived. “He is exactly where he is, as predicted by your colleague, the former chancellor, Alistair Darling,” Naughtie interrupted. “It is the Alistair Darling plan.”
“Yes,” Balls agreed, walking headlong into an entirely avoidable minefield. “But it’s one which George Osborne said was utterly irresponsible when he was in opposition.”
The truth was out. Labour and the Tories had identical economic policies which they both categorically opposed. Wigan Pier here we come.
