I love the place and often spend weekends near Abergavenny.”Immaculately turned out, I’m sure.¿ Many have wondered how Tony Blair and Gordon Brown managed to look so cosy on the (now) infamous party political broadcast directed by Anthony Minghella.Pandora can reveal that it was – believe it or not – down to an impromptu “marriage guidance” session that the Oscar-winning director insisted they should participate in on set.”Anthony thought it would get them to relax around one another,” says a mole. I’m not going to go down the well-beaten path of Anne Robinson or AA Gill and criticise the Welsh, though. The Western Mail has done huge articles about me and GQ in the past, which is hugely flattering, but I think its time to call it a day. “I just don’t think people would believe that, just as they don’t believe Labour.”Mr Osborne is resolutely on the modernising wing of the Conservative Party, and looks a little uncomfortable when challenged about his party’s immigration policy. “I don’t think our message on immigration says anything other than that we need a managed immigration policy,” he protests.However, he acknowledges that the Conservatives “have got to be careful about the language we use in this campaign”.Then, in mid-flourish, Mr Osborne, the heir to the Osborne & Little wallpaper and upholstery fortune, uses the “B” word.”Settled Asian communities in Manchester are angry that when they want a family member to come into the country there is a long and elaborate process. General blanket promises not to increase taxes are not worth the paper they are written on.”He refers to pledges by previous governments, including Tory ones, as evidence of this. “For the Conservative Party it would have perhaps been an easy option for us to say we rule out any increases in income tax or increases in national insurance,” he says.

“You announce it in the Budget, pass the legislation in the summer and the autumn and it is ready for the next financial year.”Mr Osborne was part of the team that framed the £4bn tax-cutting programme. But he is strangely wary about the party ruling out future tax rises.”I don’t make any promises like that on tax because it is completely pointless. Politicians have made far too many promises on tax that they don’t keep – both Conservative and Labour. The aim is to sign a detailed business plan by the end of tomorrow, but it remained unclear yesterday whether all nine could be pinned down in time.
The detailed plan has been demanded by the Stock Exchange before it will allow White Nile shares to return from suspension.

But the Stock Exchange is not the only adversary that Messrs Edmonds and Groves must overcome. Total, the French oil giant, continues to maintain its claim over the area that the South Sudanese are licensing to White Nile.The peace deal that ended the civil war included the agreement to respect all previous oil deals, but a member of the new southern government, Costello Garang Ring, in London last week, was insistent that Total had blown its chance of hanging on to the exploration rights it first bought in the Eighties from the central government in Khartoum. John Garang, leader of the south, refused to meet French government officials at a development conference in Norway last week, he said.However, Total – and this is very curious – says it is “continuing to develop a relationship with officials in the south of Sudan, continuing to talk to them and to explain our position”. A spokesman said meetings had been held in the past two weeks.This is not a resolvable contractual dispute in the Western sense.

It might be settled in a new north-south petroleum commission to be set up under the peace deal, but it is politics and money that will talk louder than any pieces of paper signed to date White Nile finds a positive straw in the wind. And they all come into effect in the following financial year, April 2006,” he says.Two planks of the Tory tax-cutting programme – lifting the threshold for stamp duty and helping pensioners with council tax – rely on Bills being passed through Parliament.”It would be a brave Opposition that stopped our council tax discount proposals,” he says. Older Conservatives saw his promotion, at 33, to shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury as a test of his mettle. He may be bright and articulate, but can he survive the glare of the television lights during an election?Labour was quick to seize on an admission he made on Sky that the Tory tax cuts would not come in immediately, but in 2006 – a year after the first Budget. Labour said this proved that the Tories could not afford tax cuts in the first year of a Conservative government.But the Tories defend Mr Osborne and say he was just stating the facts, as set out in published documents.So when will the three tax-cutting measures announced by the Conservatives put cash in people’s pockets?”They are all announced in the first Budget which will be in June, within a month of the election. “I will not do my impression.”Yet as he protests, he is unconsciously doing a rather good take-off of the PM. “You don’t do deals about this kind of thing.”A Tory onlooker laughs.