Has anyone noticed the remarkable transformation of George Osborne into Gordon Brown?
The chancellor's spending statement today had the feel of a Brown budget in two key ways.
Osborne:
• Rattled through the awkward bits in the way Brown used to read out Britain's growing borrowing requirement at great spend. So today Osborne barely paused for breath when he announced a series of technical changes that will allow an extra £7bn to be cut from the welfare budget.
• Left a political flourish until the end when he announced that the welfare savings will allow him to cut departmental budgets by less than Labour's plans. These will be cut by 19% over four years rather than by 20% "implied" in Alistair Darling's March budget.
And when did a chancellor last surprise his benches in this way? That would have been on 21 March 2007 when Gordon Brown announced in the closing seconds of his last budget as chancellor that he would cut the basic rate of income tax from 22p to 20p. That famously ended in tears when Labour MPs clocked that Brown paid for the apparent giveaway by abolishing the 10p tax rate.
Paul Waugh, the great political blogger, has already clocked the similarities between Osborne and Brown. Paul points out they both read history, rather than economics, at university.
Osborne will no doubt be horrified by the comparisons with Brown. He greatly admired Tony Blair, though he felt the former prime minister wasted his political capital and tried to reform Britain's public services too late in his time in office.
But Osborne has always had nothing but contempt for Brown. He believes that, far from being a great political strategist, he was a short term tactician.
A key moment for Osborne in understanding Brown came when a member of the Labour cabinet told him:
The key thing to understand about Gordon is that he is always about politics, not about policy.
No doubt Osborne will reassure his supporters that he will never develop such tendencies.
