Fraser Nelson

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.

I'm on the train back from doing Radio Four's Any Questions – broadcast live from Derby, repeated at 1.10pm tomorrow – where I had a bust-up with Christine Blower of the NUT. CoffeeHousers may recall she was the star of a cover story we ran a few weeks back, about the campaign of bullying and intimidation levelled against headteachers who are trying to seek Academy status. She raised that article during recording, and things kinda kicked off. I told her she should be ashamed of the way her union thugs try to intimidate young teachers who seek to break away from local authority control and reach independence. She denied writing the words ascribed to her, I sought to read them to her – and things descended from there. Anyway, a few thoughts... 1.

Paul Mason's review of the cuts for Newsnight last night (from 10:20 into the video here) was one of the most powerful critiques of Osborne from the left. His package majored on Osborne's decision to cut a further £11 billion from welfare and pensions, to soften the departmental cuts. Adopting a rather funereal tone, Mason declared that, "if you are poor, your life is about to change". He produced a decile graph, showing the poorest are hit second hardest. It foreshadowed this morning's Guardian cover: "Axe falls on the poor". Danny Alexander was fed to Paxo: "You said you would not balance your budget on the backs of the poor - when did you change your mind?" (Alexander performed very well - stunningly, even, given what he was doing only six months ago).

In the end, George Osborne didn't flinch. The Chancellor is a clever political operator – too clever, sometimes – but the result is a cuts package that has surprisingly broad popular support. And this has been achieved, in part, by including measures that strike the likes of me as economically unwise. So much of this budget was known in advance that we didn't find out much new today. The below points are my thoughts not on the overall package – which I strongly support – but the pieces of it that we learned today: 1) Total state spending is falling by 3.3 percent in real terms over the next four years, at a lower level than the 3.7 percent forecast in the Budget.

The less we hear from Theresa May, the more I worry about the Home Office budget. I’m hearing rumours of her taking a 30 percent cut, which I first dismissed as a piece of expectations management. But now I’m beginning to wonder. We know that defence is settled - about an 8 percent real-terms cut. The NHS, which absorbs a quarter of government spending, will have real-terms increases (something even the left-leaning IPPR doesn’t back). The schools budget has escaped relatively unscathed, we read. So what’s left? Again, there’s so much deliberate misinformation out there that I hesitate to give a rumour round-up. But here goes.   One major victim is expected to be Transport.

Anyone who thought the new intake of Tory MPs were a bunch of automatons should take a look at the House of Commons order paper today. MPs have been asked to sign away 60 percent more of British taxpayers’ money to Brussels, in defiance of British public opinion. For years, they have done so without qualms. But the Conservatives, who were so rightly outraged at the way Labour whipped through the Lisbon Treaty, are challenging this. In an age of austerity, when we’re cutting child benefit and asking if Britain can afford to be a world-class military power, why should MPs sign off a 60 percent increase in the amount of money transferred from British taxpayers to the EU authorities?

Putting Ed Balls into Home Affairs is like trapping a bee in a jar: he’ll come out furious, and anxious to sting. In his new brief, he has immigration. And he’ll know Cameron’s vulnerabilities. The greatest threat facing the coalition doesn’t come from Ed Miliband. It comes from a deep dysfunction in Britain’s economy: that when it grows, we just suck in more workers from overseas. Balls knows this, and the resentment it causes in affected communities – which is why he was talking tough on immigration during the leadership contest. He knows where the economic bodies are buried: he dug the graves. He also knows that unless Cameron manages to make work pay, he’ll end up with what is – for UK workers – a jobless recovery.

Ten years ago, when I was doing my tour of duty as a reporter in the Scottish Parliament, I had a talk with an SNP figure, who shall remain nameless, about their grand plan. Scotland was to be a nation, and that means its politicians perform in certain ways. They wanted to look like statesman, with a state. Their opportunity lay in crisis. “So when there is a disaster overseas, we will have Scottish aid leaving a Scottish airport,” he said. “When a Scot dies overseas, we have the Scottish First Minister sending condolences.” He didn’t say that, when a Libyian murderer wants to be released, the SNP can use this to thumb their nose at Wicked America and posture on the world stage.