Osborne’s Paul Daniels strategy

Is George Osborne the first British Chancellor to hide good news in the small print? I ask this in my News of the World column (£) today, and ask what he’s up to. Listening to Nick Clegg on Marr this morning, even he can’t quite say that the same forecasts that predict 500,000 public sector job losses also envisage three times as many jobs created in the private sector. Why so coy? I suspect because it would spoil the magic. That there is a deliberate gap between what this government is saying and what it believes it is doing.
 
James Forsyth was the first to write (in his political column, now available to non-subscribers) about ‘Gordon Osborne’, using Brownite tactics. But whereas Brown hid the bad stuff, Osborne is hiding the good stuff. Brown was a bad magician: Osborne is more like Paul Daniels (with Danny Alexander as his Debbie McGee).