George Osborne’s judgment

George Osborne will fly too close to the sun, a wise parliamentarian said to me nearly two years ago. And right now he appears like a gambler on a losing streak, desperately chasing that next big media win. Only this time he’s done it in a way that could talk down the pound. That is regrettable and also pretty stupid.

To see Philip Hammond doing live broadcasts at 5pm on a Saturday evening suggests to me that the Tory High Command know he’s in deep trouble too. No politician wants to give up their Saturday evening to do telly, particularly those a grand as Mr Hammond. He’ll have been ordered into action. Iain is doing his duty too but I detect a weariness in the tone of his defence.

But when you have former Conservative Treasurer Lord Kalms calling on Mr Osborne to go, surely it must only a matter of time before Mr Cameron is forced into the reshuffle he said he wasn’t going to do.