Balls and Osborne: Entertaining? Yes. Informative? Sort of.

Today we saw the first clash at Treasury Questions between George Osborne and Ed Balls. The format of these questions always meant that this exchange was likely to be a little underwhelming, and less exciting and revealing than the battle that they'll fight in the media, and that proved to be the case. But what we did see were two MPs desperate to kick each other about at every opportunity.

Ed Balls was in his element. It's not that his questions were great - they weren't. It's that he was clearly having the time of his life. He looked totally assured, like a man who completely understands what is required of him. His questions on America and the difference in snow were always going to be weak because Cameron and Osborne have both acknowledged that the figures for the last quarter of 2010 were bad even without the adverse weather. Plus any actual comparison with America's economy is riddled with problems. His joke about a hurried mini-budget was better though, as was his pointed question about Osborne having to revise down his first growth forecast, which will be a focus of attack for Labour and is something the Tories are desperately hoping to avoid.

Osborne's approach, as ever, was marked by his usual insouciant demeanour and brutal verbal assaults. Like Balls, he doesn't get fazed. On this occasion he delivered two very good lines, the first claiming that now both Balls and the Ed Miliband know what it's like to be people's second choice. More cruelly (to Ed Miliband, at least) he asked Balls what it felt like to be working under the man who used to do his photocopying. Importantly, Osborne called Balls a 'deficit denier', a line we can expect to hear again and again from the Government.

As usual, the event was a waste of time for anyone wanting to learn anything about the economy, but then that isn't the point. These sessions are political, and that's what we saw today. Every question and every answer is designed to hammer home a message about the other sides' economic incompetence: 'The Tories are leading the country into a second recession' versus 'The Labour Party caused this mess and after a bit of pain it'l be fixed and life will be great'. This was just another small part of a debate that will run throughout this Parliament.