Yesterday George Osborne found himself accused of using spin to distract attention from his missed financial targets — with the introduction of the sugar tax. Matters weren’t helped when the Chancellor’s former chief of staff Rupert Harrison appeared to admit — in a BBC interview — that the tax was introduced in the hope that it would distract from other potentially more negative Budget headlines.
So, how deep does Osborne’s spin operation go? Mr S only asks after spying a curious change of phrase in today’s Times. At 5.23pm yesterday, a comment piece by Philip Aldrick — the paper’s economic editor — was previewed online. It ran with the headline ‘Comment: the budget of a desperate chancellor‘. And the intro:
‘George Osborne pitched his eighth budget as putting “the next generation first”. A budget “to make Britain fit for the future”. What it was, rather, was the budget of a desperate chancellor.’
The piece then ran in the paper’s first print edition, under a new print headline ‘Time to think outside the box, George’ — with the description of Osborne as ‘desperate’ remaining in the first paragraph:
However, in the later print editions of the paper, the word ‘desperate’ has been removed and replaced by a much more sympathetic description.
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