George Osborne today lashed out at the BBC as he accused the corporation of "hyperbolic" coverage of his Autumn Statement.
The Chancellor launched the scathing attack after he was challenged on projections by the independent Office for Budget Responsibility.
The spending watchdog said Mr Osborne's planned cuts would see public spending fall to 12.6 per cent - its lowest level as a proportion of GDP since the 1930s by 2019/20.
In an ill-tempered interview on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, the Chancellor said: "When I woke up this morning and turned on the Today programme, I felt like I was listening to a rewind of 2010 - you had BBC correspondents saying Britain is returning to a George Orwell world of the Road To Wigan Pier.
"It is just such nonsense. I thought the BBC would have learnt over the past four years that its totally hyperbolic coverage of spending cuts has not been matched by what has actually happened."
Mr Osborne went on: "What I reject is the totally hyperbolic BBC coverage of spending reductions. I had all that when you were interviewing me four years ago and has the world fallen in? No, it hasn't."
Around 40 per cent of planned cuts are expected to have been delivered during this Parliament - with a further 60 per cent to come, according to the OBR.
The Chancellor acknowledged that "substantial" public spending cuts - expected to be closer to £30bn than the £25bn previously expected - will be required in the next parliament.
But he said the deficit had been halved since 2010 and pointed to projections that the government will record a £4billion surplus by 2018/19.
Mr Osborne said that working age benefits will have to be frozen to help make further savings, adding: "I'm not pretending these are easy decisions or that they have no impact.
"But the alternative of a return to economic chaos, of not getting on top of your debts, of people looking at Britain across the world and thinking that is not a country in charge of its own destiny, is not a world that I want to deliver."
His attack on the BBC came after Institute for Fiscal Studies director Paul Johnson warned of "big cuts to come".
He said: "The Chancellor has said he wants to reduce welfare as well as departmental spending. Even if he reduces welfare - and that's not easy - there are still big cuts to come on departmental spending.
"To be fair, it has proved easier than expected to do over this Parliament, but of course it's going to be more difficult the longer you carry on."
Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls warned Labour would have to make public spending cuts.
"It's going to be really tough," he said. "We are going to have to have spending cuts. It is going to be very difficult. Unless the economy is growing more strongly and wages are rising we are not going to get the deficit down because the money is not coming in."
