Ed Miliband emerges as a nervous passenger from north London - Telegraph.co.uk

Any offer more likely to send the Lib Dems rushing back into Nick Clegg's arms would be hard to imagine. We are not sure Mr Miliband has quite got the hang of coalition politics, or knows how to reach out to people who disagree with himself and Mr Byrne.

When Mr Miliband was asked why he considers David Cameron unable to relate "to the ordinary experiences of people in this country", the Labour leader offered the flip reply: "Because he's a Tory."

What a north London answer. We happen to live quite near to where Mr Miliband now lives, and can confirm that in modish circles in north London, it is taken for granted that anyone who is a Tory must be bad, mad or stupid.

Mr Miliband thinks of himself as a normal, decent, middle-of-the-road kind of a guy: as he said during his press conference, "I am absolutely firmly rooted in the centre ground."

The Labour leader knows this is where he needs to position himself in order to have the best chance of success. His problem is that his idea of what constitutes the centre ground turns out to be rather exclusive: "I have said I'd find it very difficult to work with Nick Clegg."

The Labour leader is happy enough to reach out to dead Liberals, such as Lloyd George, Beveridge and Keynes. But among living Lib Dems, he is only keen on working with those who can be relied upon to see things his own way.

So when Mr Miliband spoke of extending the "hand of friendship" to the Lib Dems, what he was actually proposing was the destruction of that party, with part of it joining the Tories and the rest joining Labour. We are back to a Brownite politics of dividing lines: if Mr Miliband were to get his way, we would see a restoration of the two-party system, with the Lib Dems partitioned by the great powers that surround them.

But these are early days and one could hardly expect Mr Miliband to refrain from making some attempt to exploit the Lib Dems' troubles. The Labour leader accused the Coalition Government of "going too far and too fast": a line which leaves him in the inglorious role of nervous passenger, pleading with the driver to put on the brakes.

George Osborne gazes like an 18th-century French aristocrat at the rabble who presume to question his sanity. Labour has had the effrontery to suggest, not merely that he is dippy, but that he is double dippy.

With what invincible disdain Mr Osborne disposed of the impertinent charge that his spending cuts will precipitate a double dip recession. The Chancellor took the chance to rub in the prediction by the "independent" Robert Chote, whose appointment as head of the Office of Budget Responsibility was approved by the Treasury committee of MPs, that there will be no double-dip recession.

No wonder the public does not warm to Mr Osborne. Nor do Labour MPs enjoy it when he gazes down his chilly nose at them and tells them they understand nothing.

Ed Balls, who used to be Gordon Brown's right-hand man, shook his head as Mr Osborne poured scorn on the forecasts of imminent disaster which Labour has issued. Ed Miliband, the new Labour leader, shook his head too.

Labour supporters will be pleased by this growing evidence of a co-ordinated response to Mr Osborne, for two Eds are surely better than one. But what would Alan Johnson, the shadow Chancellor, have to say?

Unlike the two Eds, Mr Johnson was not shaking he head, and has the great advantage of knowing nothing about economics, which means he is in no position to make erroneous predictions about double dips and other technical questions.

Mr Johnson opted instead to make a personal attack on Mr Osborne, whom he dismissed as a gambler: "The Chancellor is in the casino, but he hasn't spun the wheel yet."

This played directly into Mr Osborne's image as a heartless aristocrat, dressed in evening clothes which normal folk cannot afford, who does not care less how many millions of people are thrown out of work by his game of political roulette.

As Mr Johnson put it: "For families up and down the country, a jobless recovery will be no recovery at all."

The Labour family knows all too well the horror of joblessness. Gazing up and down the Labour benches, we saw men and women who may never again be able to practice their traditional trade of wrecking the public finances.

Mr Johnson is a very enjoyable speaker, with a manner that is more sympathetic than either of the two Eds. He said he was going to move the debate "from bombast to reality", and launched into his attack on an "unprecedented" and "reckless" gamble.

But people very often accuse others of their own worst faults, and politicians are no exception to this rule. One would not have guessed, from Mr Johnson's remarks, that it was a Labour Chancellor, Mr Brown, who engaged in the reckless gamble of running an enormous Budget deficit at the very time when tax revenues were soaring because the boom was getting out of control.

Mr Osborne finds himself trying to get us back to some sort of balance, and some sort of self-control, so that we do not go the way of the Irish Republic. Far from being a reckless aristocrat, he is a prudent, middle-class bookkeeper.

But it would never do for Mr Osborne to let it be known that his work is so uninteresting. Hence his vapid references to a growth strategy which evidently does not exist. He does not just want to defeat the Labour party: he wants the Labour party to feel defeated.

Lord Lawson smiled from the Gallery on Mr Osborne's work. When Nigel Lawson was Chancellor, he too had a sublimely arrogant manner. It is perhaps impossible to be a dominant Chancellor without giving the impression that one knows a million times more than the poor, ignorant mob who presume to question what one is doing.

George Osborne gazes like an 18th-century French aristocrat at the rabble who presume to question his sanity. Labour has had the effrontery to suggest, not merely that he is dippy, but that he is double dippy.

With what invincible disdain Mr Osborne disposed of the impertinent charge that his spending cuts will precipitate a double dip recession. The Chancellor took the chance to rub in the prediction by the "independent" Robert Chote, whose appointment as head of the Office of Budget Responsibility was approved by the Treasury committee of MPs, that there will be no double-dip recession.

No wonder the public does not warm to Mr Osborne. Nor do Labour MPs enjoy it when he gazes down his chilly nose at them and tells them they understand nothing.

Ed Balls, who used to be Gordon Brown's right-hand man, shook his head as Mr Osborne poured scorn on the forecasts of imminent disaster which Labour has issued. Ed Miliband, the new Labour leader, shook his head too.

Labour supporters will be pleased by this growing evidence of a co-ordinated response to Mr Osborne, for two Eds are surely better than one. But what would Alan Johnson, the shadow Chancellor, have to say?

Unlike the two Eds, Mr Johnson was not shaking he head, and has the great advantage of knowing nothing about economics, which means he is in no position to make erroneous predictions about double dips and other technical questions.

Mr Johnson opted instead to make a personal attack on Mr Osborne, whom he dismissed as a gambler: "The Chancellor is in the casino, but he hasn't spun the wheel yet."

This played directly into Mr Osborne's image as a heartless aristocrat, dressed in evening clothes which normal folk cannot afford, who does not care less how many millions of people are thrown out of work by his game of political roulette.

As Mr Johnson put it: "For families up and down the country, a jobless recovery will be no recovery at all."

The Labour family knows all too well the horror of joblessness. Gazing up and down the Labour benches, we saw men and women who may never again be able to practice their traditional trade of wrecking the public finances.

Mr Johnson is a very enjoyable speaker, with a manner that is more sympathetic than either of the two Eds. He said he was going to move the debate "from bombast to reality", and launched into his attack on an "unprecedented" and "reckless" gamble.

But people very often accuse others of their own worst faults, and politicians are no exception to this rule. One would not have guessed, from Mr Johnson's remarks, that it was a Labour Chancellor, Mr Brown, who engaged in the reckless gamble of running an enormous Budget deficit at the very time when tax revenues were soaring because the boom was getting out of control.

Mr Osborne finds himself trying to get us back to some sort of balance, and some sort of self-control, so that we do not go the way of the Irish Republic. Far from being a reckless aristocrat, he is a prudent, middle-class bookkeeper.

But it would never do for Mr Osborne to let it be known that his work is so uninteresting. Hence his vapid references to a growth strategy which evidently does not exist. He does not just want to defeat the Labour party: he wants the Labour party to feel defeated.

Lord Lawson smiled from the Gallery on Mr Osborne's work. When Nigel Lawson was Chancellor, he too had a sublimely arrogant manner. It is perhaps impossible to be a dominant Chancellor without giving the impression that one knows a million times more than the poor, ignorant mob who presume to question what one is doing.