George Osborne’s fact-finders come up trumps in the Autumn Statement

Osborne got his chance to audition for Number 10 today. He hasn’t the fluency and the synthetic chumminess of Cameron. And his emotional range is far narrower than the PM’s. He’s like Nigel Lawson, cool, uneasy, watchful. His brain-power is more than his head can bear and there’s a detached, arrhythmic otherness about him. He’s uncongenial, in the way a good Dr Who should be, but he can’t ad lib at the despatch box. If he’s interrupted he glances upwards, (with worried eyes and Nixon conk), and stares out, bewildered and a little frightened. With a script, and plenty of rehearsal, he has authority even though his basic mode is, ‘I told you so’. He does a good line in swotty, schoolboy scorn.

He told us today that he was right about everything, except eradicating the deficit, where he was half right. The bit that won’t budge, 50 per cent, will be gone by 2020.