Queasy does it... George finally sinks his teeth in
George Osborne was looking grim-faced for a man playing Herod to child benefit.
The Chancellor's eyes were coal-black and panda-large in a pale face. He could so easily double as the handsome young count in the old horror films who turns out to be a vampire when the fog descends. Given what he was about to announce, it's hardly surprising he was a bit white at the gills.
He brought good and bad news. The Labour "disaster" had brought a Tory government to power - and left the noble coalition with the mess to clear up.
Mr Osborne relishes the phrases, "the brink of bankruptcy" and "economic abyss" like a fine wine.
True, there is still a slight quack in the Osborne voice, but a lot of training has gone into making this speaker laugh-proof. He punched his fist downwards for emphasis, grimaced and pursed his lips at the mention of the word "Labour".
Rhetorically, this was a bit of a stir fry. Some good lines rang out on Ed Miliband's union-backed victory, "the vested interest, not the national interest". Some odd George-isms loomed too: "Our victory is the absence of war: we must win the peace." The front bench looked bamboozled, but clapped anyway.
They got a lot happier when he started to talk about squeezing waste and cutting admin costs: "All that Labour nonsense will go". We imagined a large skip in the middle of Whitehall, marked "Labour nonsense" - and brimming with Gordon Brown's budget projections, Tony Blair's memoirs and David Miliband's unused victory speeches.
He left all talk of the child benefit chop until we had been lured into agreement about the need for benefit cuts. "We're all in this together," intoned George, a phrase as reliable as Gordon Brown's "moral compass" . It always means something unpleasant is coming.
The lopping off of child benefit to higher-rate taxpayers will save a billion pounds, but cause him no end of grief as the middle classes forfeit a perk that reassured them they might occasionally derive something back from the state.
"One more truth," added George. He was going to work nicely with Vince Cable. David Cameron looked on, pinkly happy with his protégé. The great cutter retired on a wave of applause. The reception outside the conference won't be so obliging.
