Osborne is polite but distant with hints of country weekender

As they sat on school chairs awaiting their call, the four men and a woman looked just like candidates at a job interview, which is only right. They were to be tested in debate for the post of member of parliament for the Tatton constituency.

At this point an innocent might not have known the process was a stitch-up, still less have guessed the preordained winner. Seeing him in the much-reduced flesh, the degree of shrinkage is extraordinary; he seemed frail and nervous, as well as slimmer. Only when the five mounted the platform did George Osborne look like a man of power and a certainty to extend his 14-year reign as Tatton's MP and then . . . ah, that bit's become a bit tricky.

He had arrived at the Knutsford Academy for hustings organised by the Knutsford Guardian. The format was in keeping with the rules of disengagement that have become the norm this election: the questions, primarily local, were preselected; the timings strict; interventions almost non-existent.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer was fine with all that. He was, even as they assembled, polite but a bit distant, which is his style as an MP. He might have had a good gossip with his Labour opponent, David Pinto-Duschinsky, a special adviser at the Treasury under the old regime; they might even have had a decent joust on financial nitty-gritty. Neither was on the agenda.

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But there was just a hint of the country weekender in his answers: "We've got to get the redesign of Bottom Street right," he added later with slightly suspicious emphasis, the way the couple who have bought the big house might say: "Of course we use the village shop. We bought our milk there the Christmas before last."

While half-listening to the others, the chancellor had a faraway look, as though something else was on his mind. He hardly reacted to what they said, except when the Ukip man, Stuart Hutton, proclaimed that all his party's plans had been properly costed, whereupon the chancellor slipped him a sideways look of contempt as though Mr Hutton had just put a turd on the table. Mostly, his eyes darted around; the brow was furrowed.

As the evening went on, his command grew and his political class shone through. He subtly got across that the planned road and rail improvements were not unconnected with his influence. But he did not own the hall: the biggest applause of the night came when a sixth-former asked if the railways ought to be renationalised.

<>This is a notoriously rich and ostentatious constituency, covering the lushest parts of the Cheshire commuter belt. But the footballers are rarely on the electoral roll. The Rolex shop and Aston Martin dealers in Wilmslow are reputedly close to one of the town's three food banks. And both Knutsford and Alderley Edge stations are shockers, unthinkable in the south.

Tatton was where in 1997 the disgraced Tory Neil Hamilton was overthrown by the Independent Martin Bell who, had he not stood down, might be the MP even now. And George Osborne would have gone elsewhere and never been to the scout hut or Bottom Street. He may soon be spending more time worrying about such things rather than the deficit in 2019-20; hence, I suppose, the furrowed brow.

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