Completely right.

That the debate is framed as being cuts versus growth is ridiculous. It suits Labour of course, but it’s disingenuous. For a start, the two are not mutually exclusive. Secondly, and importantly, debt isn’t free. You can’t just borrow more and more without having to pay it back along with substantial interest. Every day we don’t address the deficit we delay the punishment but ensure that it’ll be much more severe when the time comes to take it.

It’d also be more intellectually honest for people to admit that they don;t have definitive answers. Clearly, Osborne can’t show doubt publicly (wouldn’t go down well with regard to domestic and international confidence) and, in fairness, Balls is entitled to assert aggressively that he believes his party’s approach to be correct.

But I think talking in certainties is misguided, particularly where commentators are concerned. No economist has the definitive answer, although they might pretend to, and neither do casual observers know what is going to happen. Osborne’s tactic is a gamble in that it is risky. However, cutting slower or even not at all are not tactics without risk. Far from it. In fact, in my opinion, those options would be far worse.

At any rate, on this, people are seeing that the Coalition’s strategy is hurting but isn’t working.

We could also factor in some associated savings if the deficit was tackled in this way – according to a mass of research, reducing extreme inequality in the uk should help bring down crime, reduce drug problems, improve health and a variety of other benefits that would reduce the need for many of the most expensive services and make our economy more competitive.

For some reason our leaders don’t fancy this route. They think public services, the disabled and middle and poorer income families should pay it all off – that’ll really reduce the costs of crime, health demands, drug addiction etc won’t it. Derrrrrrr

There are potential down-sides for voters to both approaches. More aggressive deficit reduction may well require a steeper decline in spending.

But to delay cutting the deficit will mean paying back a much bigger debt overall and far more interest in the mean time. Over the long-term, the amount of cash available for public or individual spending will be smaller, the longer the deficit is retained. Furthermore, the more time is taken to take definitive action, the more potent this effect will be.

The “Darling” plan (is this really what Labour, now on their third Treasury spokesman since Darling, are calling their economic strategy?) has been presented as having no drawbacks whatsoever. It’s more of a Balls plan.

We have been told by the Fawcett Society, for example, that fiscal consolidation will have a disproportionately harsh effect on women. Yet more women than men agreed with the first statement, i.e. the George Osborne plan.

Similarly, I have read that the cuts will hurt the elderly more than the young. Yet in the 65+ category, more people supported the Osborne-type wording than the Darling strategy.

On the headline poll result, I’m not entirely surprised. People often like the idea of putting off the unpleasant, while wall-to-wall media coverage tells us incessantly how awful the cuts are going to be. I would say, however, that the gap is narrow (nothing like, for example, the comprehensive caning that AV took in the referendum) and that public opinion could go either way in the future, depending on how Osborne’s gamble works out.

Finally, given that the wording of the poll I’m even less surprised that Darling’s plan comes across as, marginally, more popular. The statement used to sum up Darling’s plan doesn’t use the words ‘spending cuts’, which instinctively make people recoil.