The Chancellor probably didn’t expect the type of questioning he faced this morning on Radio 4’s Today programme. It soon turned into a car-crash.



For once, Osborne was asked why he kept missing his own targets on the economy, and he didn’t have an answer.

But John Humphreys wasn’t about to let him off the hook.

JH: My question to you was based on the the fact, and it is a fact, that you set yourself three targets and you have already failed to meet two of them. A target of debt declining as a proportion of national income, for a start, a very important target. These things were enshrined in law effectively, and you simply said ‘well, we didn’t meet them, but so what, really’. Osborne: Well, look, I set out very publicly, and they’re enshrined in charter we put before Parliament, what we seek to achieve as a government, and what we’re seeking to achieve is repair our public finances… Humphreys: More than seek to achieve.. more than seek to achieve, you WERE going to do these things and as you say enshrine them in law, and as you say you haven’t done two of these three.

And then a bit later on Humphreys asked the killer question

I suppose what I’m asking is… What’s a bloke got to do in your job to get the sack?

Listen

For once the Today programme did its job and Osborne was left flailing.