This is one you won’t see the Cabinet Press Office blasting out on Twitter today:

The ‘study’ referred to is from the Institute for Fiscal Studies….a Thatcherite think tank that is doggedly monetarist in its outlook.This is what it says:

‘…while employment rates have returned to a pre-crisis level, real wages remain “well below” their peak for nearly every group. But losses have not been spread out equally: for those aged between 22 and 29, median hourly pay in 2014 was 9 per cent lower than before the great recession…easily the biggest drop.’

‘…the mean earnings falls in the public sector have been smaller…’

‘….middle to higher income households have actually escaped remarkably unscathed from the coalition’s austerity measures.’

There are no surprises here at all: it is exactly what this right-wing consultancy said a year ago. But as was the case a year ago, most voters don’t subscribe to the IFS website, or read the New Statesman,Guardian and Indie titles most likely to report on it. So Cameron and Osborne can Carry on Lying with impunity.

But as the key points above show, classic Tory voters are doing well, and Labour/non-voters are being crushed. Plus (as always) the Sir Humphreys are being well looked after. Add this to where the NHS money and local infrastructure money seems to be going – Tory marginals – and we can see that it’s no so much economic engineering that’s going on here as political electioneering.