Fresh air

It has become a cliché in recent days to contrast the gloomy jowls of Gordon Brown, performing emergency surgery to his spending plans in the Commons, with the beaming countenance of David Cameron, radiating hope and happiness throughout the nation. To make too much of this contrast is, of course, to underestimate the task that faces the Conservatives in winning the next election; unlike Labour at Tony Blair’s election as leader in 1994, the Tories are still some way behind Labour in the polls. But like all good clichés, there is considerable truth in the assertion that there has been a change in the political mood of Britain.

Save, perhaps, when a member of the shadow front bench makes a crack at Peter Mandelson’s expense, the Chancellor is almost always gloomy. But this week he had a genuine reason to be so. It isn’t just that the figures for economic growth are disappointing, at a time when the rest of the industrialised world seems to be doing rather well. It is that Mr Brown’s entire philosophy of attempting to run the economy on public-sector growth has been exposed as fatally flawed.

If anything, the Conservative leadership election has proved a welcome distraction for the Chancellor. Although his pre-Budget report on Monday received a mauling, it is on days two and three following his parliamentary performances, when the small print finally leaks out, that the full implications invariably become clear. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the Chancellor’s hopelessly over-optimistic forecast of economic growth means that he will only be able to balance his books by slashing planned public spending and possibly by raising taxes by £3 billion a year — on top of this week’s raid on oil companies.