YOU can’t keep a good man down as the old saying goes, and it would appear that this applies doubly to duplicitous, conniving chancers.

Thus, as we were, ahem, treated to newly annointed (at least one presumes that is the procedure, he was certainly oily enough) Chancellor Philip Hammond’s inaugural Autumn Statement none other than Gideon Osborne once more rose to the surface like a fat-berg in a London sewer.

Hammond, showing he was at once a master of self-delusion and completely out of touch with the overwhelming mood of the populace, his own party and the world in general seemed to think his financial statement had gone rather well.

In holding this opinion he was in a minority of one. Even his Cabinet colleagues squirmed at the level of tortuous waffle he spewed forth from the despatch box. Everyone else had presumably lapsed into unconsciousness as their brains sought to preserve themselves from the slow drip of sanctimonious rubbish emerging from the mouth of yet another man without a plan.

Like Osborne, Hammond was spectacularly short on specifics, preferring instead to rely on half-baked assessments and policy-making on the hoof.

Unlike Osborne he did not have the luxury of blaming Labour for everything; instead he aimed closer to home and effectively blamed the Brexiteers within his own party for the financial debacle we now face.

Ironically, while Hammond was claiming that the nation has no money, mainly as a result of the disastrous austerity policies of the previous incumbent, that self-same individual has been raking in the filthy lucre across the pond.

It emerged yesterday that the Treasury’s equivalent of Pontius Pilot made £320,000 in a matter of weeks from delivering speeches to gullible fools in the US.

The former chancellor has trousered more than £80,000 a go, with tens of thousands more to come for some of his recent speaking engagements, according to the register of MPs’ financial interests.

It is a pity he didn’t display such extraordinary financial acumen when he was running the country into the ground.

But then that wasn’t about feathering his own nest but looking after the plebs, which as we were further reminded this week is strictly against Tory Party policy.