His voice still sounds, as Simon Hoggart so rightly pointed out recently, uncannily like Ann Widdecombe's. But within minutes of the chancellor's debate beginning on the Daily Politics show , it was George Osborne's new hairstyle that was trending. And not in a good way.
"OMG osborne evelyn waugh style hair nightmare!" was how one post skewered the new look with Twitter's inimitable economy of phrasing. Osborne's decision to comb his hair into the neatest parting since Lord Snooty is puzzling, since it can only add to the vague but unshakeable sense of a man who has just had his jacket buttoned up by his nanny.
The style is best described as the kind you get by flattening your hair with a damp palm for a school photo – hardly an allusion a Tory party haunted by the spectre of those Bullingdon Club photos is eager to remind voters of. "OMG Osborne's hair now has a side-parting. Big, big error. Makes him look even younger … like Little Lord Fauntleroy" was another of the kinder comments on Twitter. Osborne is not the first to attract criticism for his haircut – some fashion bloggers have even dared wonder aloud whether Nick Clegg's hair is not a little dry, helpfully recommending intensive conditioning treatments – but with Vince Cable's hair receding from, ahem, the front line, Darling's Agyness Deyn-esque platinum crop was the clear winner.
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