To see off Ed Miliband, the Tories need to do better than an Alan B'stard stimulus

A banker of my acquaintance went to Switzerland skiing this winter. A luxury he normally could not afford, but he’d just remortgaged thanks to George Osborne’s Funding For Lending scheme and saved a packet. To his amazement, he was being bailed out by the Chancellor – he didn’t need the money but thought he’d take it if it was going. The cash certainly tricked down – to the après-ski champagne bars of Verbier.

The Chancellor’s stimulus makes the cheapest loans only available to the rich (ie, those with at least 40 per cent equity in their house) and like all of the Treasury’s cheap debt wheezes it was just another subsidy to a grossly overpaid consumer who really, really didn’t need it. Right now, those with a 5pc deposit are charged twice the interest of those lucky enough to have 40pc to lay down.

Make no mistake: if Alan B’stard were to write a budget that rewarded the rich and screwed the poor, he’d struggle to come up with something as iniquitous as Quantitative Easing and cheap debt for for the rich (allowing them to buy more assets, then watch as the value of those assets is inflated by QE).