Backbenchers were all ears for Osborne's election-winning rabbit

A little good economic news goes a long way in the chancellor's budget speech

Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit, rabbit. The Tory backbenchers were starting to get a bit restless. They wanted their pre-election feelgood rabbit but the chancellor just wanted to rabbit. And cluck. Sudden weight loss, sweaty forehead, pallid features and half-dead eyes; George Osborne had been re-reading Trainspotting.

"We choose the future, we choose families, we choose the future," he began. The second future was a different future to the first future: in the second future you also got a fucking big TV thrown in. The chancellor had first tried his line in junky-chic at the Conservative party conference last September and it hadn't gone down particularly well then, either. A typical Osborne speech works best as aversion therapy and the Tories generally try to limit his public appearances. For the budget, they have to grin and bear it.