George Osborne does a bit of Indian Bicycle Marketing, Ed Balls goes off-script

He's really gone round the clock of DoubleThink this time, from The Daily Mail:

Economic doom-mongers who insisted cuts in public spending would stifle economic growth have been ‘proven wrong’, Chancellor George Osborne will say today.

In a speech in the US, the Chancellor will point out that Britain’s economy has grown faster than that of any other major country over the last year - and is now forecast by the International Monetary Fund to do the same in 2014.

Mr Osborne’s remarks are a swipe at Labour, which [sic] predicted his austerity measures would push unemployment up by a million, and the IMF itself, which was warning him to change course as late as last year.

Firstly, is the UK economy really recovering? The agreed script is that the Tories will say "Oh yes it is!" and Labour will say "Oh no it's not!"

So people who are doing reasonably well will vote Tory next time and those who aren't doing so well will vote Labour.

But they can't both be right, either the economy is recovering or it isn't (and if you ask me, Labour are right but for the wrong reasons, it's just another debt-fuelled pre-election binge).

Secondly, the script also has the Tories promising to "rein in public spending and eliminate the deficit" and Labour wailing on about "Savage Tory cuts."

So people who'd prefer smaller government will vote Tory and those who'd prefer a bit more government spending will vote Labour.

But on the facts, the Tories have not reined in overall public spending one little bit and they are running larger deficits than the previous Labour government (whether Labour would be spending even more, were they in government is open to debate).

Only Labour can't point that out because it's not in the script. To say this out loud would completely give the game away and mean that there is little point in voting either Tory or Labour.

Ed Balls is desperately trying to square this circle:

Labour’s shadow Chancellor Ed Balls conceded that wages would start to rise faster than prices this year - ending the squeeze on incomes. But he insisted changes in tax and benefits meant a family with children was ‘well over £2,000 or £3,000 a year worse off’.

"The economy is finally getting stronger and thank goodness. My argument with George Osborne was that he inherited an economy in 2010 that was growing. I think he made big mistakes in 2010, it knocked confidence," he added.

"He said he would balance the budget in this Parliament and he’s not going to do to do that at all, and it’ll take us in the next Parliament to do that."

Which is a pretty nuanced argument, subtext: the economy is growing - but not fast enough and the government isn't spending enough - but its deficits are too large. Wouldn't spending more not increase the deficit?