Word Salad Says What

I do not think the brain trust in the UK has any clue.

"We're part of a team," he said. "We have a collectively agreed policy, and I'm delivering on my bit of it, which centres particularly on the area of industrial strategy, and I'm not proposing a radically different approach. I would be building on what George Osborne has already achieved."

Osborne was "not doing two jobs" and worked "full-time" on Treasury business, he said.

"We all contribute in a collective way to the overall decisions of government. I am responsible for the business, innovation and skills department. I also contribute to wider debates on the economy … we both work hard, and we both work full-time on what we're supposed to be doing, which is getting this crisis-hit economy out of the mire that we find ourselves in. We've got a combined approach, a team approach, and we're sticking to it."

On the government's economic strategy, he said: "I think it's right and necessary that we have budget discipline – that's the path we've embarked on and we must stick with that. But I think it is possible at the same time to have the foundations of a recovery which is sustained."