Just a test post

Can you remember the last time a British chancellor sounded so shrill? After 18 years of measured tones from Tory grandees followed by 13 years of Scottish gravitas, we are not used to hearing our chancellor sounding excitable and impulsive. Yet if George Osborne's recent outburst on AV and the Electoral Reform Society has received most attention, it is his rush to give partisan interpretations of events in Europe and the US that has caught my ear.

First he made the extraordinary claim that Britain could have gone the same way as Portugal if it were not for his deficit reduction plan. Leave aside the fact that Portugal is locked into the eurozone – so has no exchange-rate flexibility and the same interest rates as growing countries like Germany – or that Britain's debt is more long term than any advanced economy.