Economic Gloom and a Government on the Defensive

How many phone calls did George Osbourne's office make today? Or perhaps it was Osbourne's attack on the BBC for only reporting the bad news and attacking the government all the time that did it.

The leading story on the BBC proclaims "IMF Supports UK Economic Policy". With so many attacks on the economic policy from a variety of esteemed sources, including OECD and the Bank of England, the government must be pleased to get big boy on their side.

There is a great deal of hyperbole over presumed economic gloom, it sells papers and consumes search engines. Redundancies, as Osbourne rightly observed (never thought i'd say that), are much more newsworthy than job creations. Therefore from the media alone it is very difficult to get a balanced view.

But for the BBC to respond so immediately to Osbourne's claims this afternoon implies that the gloom and persistent news about the gloom is worrying the government a bit too much to be ignored now.

Also, we have still to see any comment from Cameron on the forecasts, he appears to be happy to let Osbourne and Danny Alexander field the blows the press are launching from all sides.