One of the many blows landed by Alex Salmond during last night’s debate centred on Alistair Darling’s criticism of the Office of Budget Responsibility, set up in 2010 by George Osborne to provide independent economic forecasts for the Treasury.
The OBR’s numbers have been key to the Better Together’s onslaught on the numerical black holes at the heart of the Yes campaign. Yet Darling was left spluttering that he was ‘taken out of context’ and ‘misquoted’ when Salmond pulled up criticism the Better Together boss had made of the OBR, with a more partisan hat on.
Salmond recited a sentence uttered by Darling in 2010, as far as Mr S can see, entirely accurately: ‘Right from the start the Tories used the OBR not just as part of the government but as part of the Conservative Party.
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