George Osborne’s defence of austerity shows why Labour won’t have it easy at the next election 🖊️ paulwaugh via ipaperviews
June 20, 2023 6:43 pmThe timing was spooky. At the exact moment that George Osborne, his successor as Chancellor Jeremy Hunt rose to his feet in the Commons to take Treasury Questions.
Fluent, confident and impeccably well briefed, Osborne prefaced his testimony with a short statement expressing “heartfelt sympathy” to all those bereaved by Covid. He added “for those who feel things could have been done differently, I hope the inquiry gets to the bottom of what those things might have been”.he had personally done could have been done differentlyFar from being embarrassed about his austerity programme of spending cuts, he leaned into it.
GPs and hospitals were missing almost all routine targets, prisons saw a dramatic increase in levels of self-harm and violence due to overcrowding. Unfortunately, the KC didn’t follow up by pointing out that such a statement was a sleight of hand, as it’s incontrovertible that the Con-Lib CoalitionMoreover, for all Osborne’s talk about his tight spending controls building up the “flex” later needed for emergency spending, he was not challenged about the fact that his failure to invest in staffing, buildings and diagnostics meant there was no similar “flex” for the NHS to react as quickly as the Treasury reacted with furlough.
Underlining the big difference between legal questions and political answers, he made an impassioned defence of his policies by suggesting there was no alternative. And, ahead of the next election, here’s the real reason why Labour ought to be worried by “the Osborne defence”. In asking “well what would you have done instead?” he pressed on the bruise that is Keir Starmer’s worries about his party not being trusted with voters’ money.
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