Osborne enters the fray

Seems that the Tories can be more assertive too. After remaining more or less silent on the matter since the coalition was formed, George Osborne has today given his take on the AV referendum to the Daily Mail — and he’s far from kind towards the Yes campaign. “What really stinks,” says the Chancellor, “is actually one of the ways the Yes campaign is funded.” What he has in mind are the campaign’s ties to an organisation that sells vote counting services, as revealed by Ed Howker in The Spectator. “I think there are some very, very serious questions that have to be answered.”

But, rather than just attacking the Yes campaign itself, Osborne also has some choice barbs for the Lib Dem part of it. A No vote, he suggests, will close the question of electoral reform “for the foreseeable future” — which is another way of saying that it’s now or never, Nick Clegg.