While David Cameron is busy trying to show a stiff upper lip in the face of Chinese descriptions of Britain - an old country fit only for tourism and study - asking if Chinese banks would like to take over HS2 and, while they're at it, any other British infrastructure the government wishes to sell, his hapless colleague Nick Clegg was underperforming at Prime Minister's questions.

The mot juste came from Tory ideologue Peter Bone, who welcomed Clegg into the Tory fold and said he thought he was really "one of us."

Thus the Lib Dems continue to back up the Tory reconfiguration of society.

Later on today Chancellor George Osborne will make his autumn statement, which is actually more significant than the Budget in March as it sets out the direction of travel for the government and public spending - and will attempt to bind the next Parliament to its spending plans.

This would be a great opportunity for Ed Balls to announce that an incoming Labour government will not accept the coalition's spending limits and will instead do what Osborne did in 2010 - introduce its own emergency budget straight after the general election.

As a build-up to its autumn statement the government has announced a further fire sale of public assets.

It hopes to raise £20 billion from this, double its original target.

This will be through selling 40 per cent of the stake in Eurostar, ending any British public investment in the vital rail link with France and Belgium.

Also included are plans to sell Channel 4, the Royal Mint, the Meteorological Office, Ordinance Survey and the Post Office.

The obsession with short-term sales of very efficient and profitable businesses sells the whole country short in the long run.

There is also a nasty side to it.

The sale of the £890 million student loan book to an investment consortium for £160m, and then allowing the private sector free rein in trying to collect student loans from graduates - relying on it to determine whether students are earning less than the £21,000 a year required to be eligible for repayment - is bad news.

It might reduce public debt but it also opens the way to greedy private companies attempting to collect debts which may in some cases be almost unpayable.

Lib Dem Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander sounded like a real Tory.

"What I am setting out today is an ambition of some examples of things we could sell," he said.

"Clearly no final decisions have been made about any of these assets but clearly the point is that when the government owns assets that could be more efficiently managed in the private sector and where we can get money in to invest in vital infrastructure projects... they can back up the vote of confidence that we're seeing from the private sector."

Like a true Tory he sees government and the public realm as a business to be bought and sold, not something held in trust for future generations.

Alexander went on to welcome the fact that large insurance companies are proposing to invest £25bn in national infrastructure as "a massive vote of confidence."

It's not clear whether the sales are going to be either direct-sale public assets to one buyer or the Royal Mail option of share sales at a reduced rate.

For the record Royal Mail shares went on sale at £3.30 each and are now trading at almost double that (£5.89).

A deft investor will have made almost a 100 per cent profit for doing absolutely nothing - just having enough cash to buy a substantial tranche of shares.

Sadly that profit will be paid for by the loss of jobs, increased contracting out of services and further threats to Royal Mail workers' conditions of service.

Perhaps what ought to overshadow the Chancellor's statement today should be the cost of living, working conditions and wages, as well as the poverty of those on benefits in Britain today.

Cameron, Osborne and Clegg are always very quick to claim that the loss of public-sector jobs has been more than replaced by new jobs in the private sector.

They always fail to say that these jobs are always on inferior conditions and wages, many are on zero-hours contracts and they hardly ever have the sort of public pension arrangements that public-sector unions have been able to negotiate for their members.