Did Richard Curtis script today’s showdown between Osborne and Balls?

Even though they ended up walking through the lobbies together (though not hand in hand, skipping, sadly), Ed Balls and George Osborne still managed to have the sort of Commons showdown that would fit right in to the script of Bridget Jones. On and on their furious fighting went, over whether the long-term economic plan was working, over whether Labour had a long-term economic plan, over whether Britain would get its AAA credit rating back, over whether Balls would borrow more and whether Osborne was cutting the deficit slower than he’d intended. On and on and on. Both looked as though they were enjoying tearing chunks out of one another before agreeing with each other on paper.

Labour thinks that today’s exercise – voting with the government on the Charter for Budget Responsibility – is largely pointless. A gimmick, Ed Miliband called it. And indeed, it might seem that given the party did vote with the government on the motion this evening, it has avoided the trap that George Osborne was setting it, which was for it to refuse to back the Tory line on spending.