Has Boris Johnson joined the austerity sceptics? George Osborne holds firm for now

He may have a famously thick skin, but George Osborne's economic plans have been assailed from several directions this week. Being accosted by a pesky Greenpeace activist in the loo of a Davos restaurant is probably the least of his worries. More problematical are comments from at least three other sources. Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg now says he believes that the Coalition began cutting capital spending too fast as the BBC reports here. It is important to note that Clegg’s change of heart is arguably his second. In the last election, it was certainly arguable that the Liberal Democrats campaigned on a slower pace of cuts than they finally embraced, though in truth all three parties’ programmes were quite sketchy on detail. However the Liberal Democrats were seen to be aligned more with Labour, until they ‘looked at the books’ and signed up to mo...