News from Labour Matters

Would-be Chancellor George Osborne gets it wrong again

As the Conservatives today repeat their plan that Britain’s debt requires an ‘emergency budget’ in the first days of a Cameron government, when it doesn’t, the voters appear to be making their mind up about the economic competence of the opposition.

That’s not really surprising given that the would-be Chancellor is widely regarded as the Conservatives’ weakest link. Osborne’s economic judgement has been wrong at every turn, but it’s the errors in his own judgement which should ring alarm bells.

His promise that he could save £13bn by raising the state pension age was rightly criticised after it was discovered that it would take five years longer than estimated and fall £3bn short.

So too was his claim that a ‘leaked’ Treasury document showed that Labour planned income tax rises in 2011-12, when instead it simply showed the results of recovery from the recession.

Multi-millionaire George Osborne also admitted that he’d made an “administrative error” with his own mortgage expenses, and was forced to pay back some of the money he wrongly claimed from the taxpayer. But today we learn that the man who said that “we’re all in it together” has also over-claimed AFTER the expenses rules had been changed – asking for £1,400 last month in mortgage interest expenses when the limit is now £1,250.

Does this economically illiterate man have no shame?