Labour fails to get bang for its borrowed buck 

The Tories must have been tempted to roar across the Chamber, that all you got Darling? There was little in the speech that we did not know was coming and the overall effect was underwhelming. Indeed, the only numbers that grabbed one’s attention were the debt figures. Also Darling by announcing that the economy will be growing again by the third-quarter of next year has created a yard-stick against which this PBR can be measured. The opposition will be justified in saying that it has failed by the government’s own criteria if Britain is not out of recession this time next year.

To further improve the Tory mood, George Osborne turned in his strongest-ever Commons performance. If Osborne had been poor today, the muttering against him would have grown louder. But with his aggressive dissection of Darling’s speech, Osborne appears to have turned the page on what has been a rough chapter in his political life thanks to both the reactive Tory approach to the economic crisis and his boneheaded holiday antics. Today was the day that Osborne proved that he is up to the task of being Shadow Chancellor at a time when the economic question is once more dominating politics.