George Osborne’s broadcast tour this morning served two purposes. The first was to reward those ministers who aren’t playing hard to get in the spending review negotiations by praising their readiness to settle. The second was to prod Labour a bit. Osborne’s love of ‘weaponising’ policy can irritate his colleagues at times, but the spending review is a welcome opportunity for the Chancellor to focus voters’ minds on whether they really want to trust Labour with the economy again in 2015. He told BBC News:
‘The British people will decide who’s the government in 2015 but the financial year starts before the general election, so we have to set out spending plans like any organisation.
‘You have to give departments a budget for the rest of the year. It begs a very interesting question for those who would like to do the kind of jobs that we’re doing, the Labour party, to tell us if they would match these plans. But that’s up to them, what I’m clear is we’re making the right decisions, we’re fixing the economy and spending money where it’s wanted: on the NHS and on infrastructure.’
Expect to hear every loyal backbench MP and minister echoing that very interesting question over the next month and in the weeks following the spending review announcement.
But Osborne chose not to prod the Lib Dems, who are blocking further welfare cuts. Perhaps he was happy to leave that to Iain Duncan Smith, who the Telegraph reports has contacted Philip Hammond and Theresa May to outline £3bn of cuts to his department that would safeguard Defence and Home Office spending that both secretaries of state are concerned about. IDS has been working on this since March. Osborne said he was working on the assumption that this wouldn’t happen, telling the Today programme that ‘I am in effect ruling it out’. But it looks as though those on the right of the Tory party still want to weaponise welfare, not just against Labour or the Lib Dems, but also against one another.
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