Yet this morning - as I listened from afar on a half-term break - I couldn't help noticing that this latest news simply led both Messrs Osborne and Balls to say "I told you so".

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"It's almost like they're attacking me for being me and so to that I can only say, 'Well, I can only be myself, so I don't know really what you want me to do, '" he told "Gwissues" host and interviewer Howard Bragman, a publicist who recently began representing Johnson.

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