George Osborne: Britain is coming back (alright)

Treasury Questions today was rather formulaic. George Osborne spent a little while congratulating himself on today’s growth figures (only to be cut off by Bercow, who complained his answer was ‘far too long’), and loyal Tory MPs congratulated him too. Many of them chanted the phrase ‘long-term economic plan’. Some Labour MPs helped out by saying it too, which Osborne thanked them for. He has his own new phrase, which sounds a bit like a Backstreet Boys single: ‘Britain is coming back’.

‘Britain is coming back, alright,’ he (nearly) told MPs, before demanding that Labour congratulate him on the GDP figures. When it came to Ed Balls’ turn, he dispensed the usual formula of ‘today’s welcome news that the economy is finally growing again’ and then asked a question about whether living standards would rise and the Chancellor manage to balance the books by 2015. As usual, George Osborne didn’t answer it, but instead talked about car crashes.