Sketch: George Osborne makes a fuel of Ed Balls His colleagues certainly didn't miss it. You could tell, because they couldn't stop bringing it up. Again and again, Conservative backbenchers leapt up to ask about the fuel duty freeze: Sarah Newton (Truro and Falmouth), Robert Halfon (Harlow), Philip Hollobone (Kettering), David Morris (Morecambe and Lunesdale). Essentially, their questions were all the same - "Isn't the fuel duty freeze a completely brilliant thing that shows how completely brilliant we are?" - but the Chancellor and his ministers never tired of answering it, by confirming that yes, the fuel duty freeze was a completely brilliant thing that showed how completely brilliant they were. Danny Alexander, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, was so proud of the freeze that he used it as his answer to a question from Labour about a totally different topic ("Why has Britain dropped back into recession?"). Bless the boy. Probably it was just youthful over-excitement that made him forget to answer the question properly. Labour doggedly tried to maintain the idea that the freeze was all thanks to Mr Balls. No one tried more doggedly than Mr Balls himself. "The Chancellor certainly listened to the Today programme this morning!" he hooted, desperately. But Mr Osborne was waiting for him, eyes glinting with villainous glee. He couldn't have looked more delighted with his own cunning if he'd just spun round in a black leather chair with a fluffy white cat on his lap. A Labour whip, he pointed out, had declared on Twitter mere moments earlier that the freeze was only "a deferred rise and cannot improve the economy." So if the Labour whip thought it wouldn't work, why had the Shadow Chancellor been clamouring for it so noisily? Mr Balls floundered, shouted and swiped. Meanwhile, Mr Osborne bathed in self-satisfaction. Never can a Chancellor have looked quite so pleased to announce a U-turn.