John McDonnell has busied himself today on the airwaves setting out Labour’s five key demands for the budget. His call for an end to austerity would mean pausing the roll-out of Universal Credit, ditching the public sector pay cap, more money into infrastructure, health, education, and local government along with a large-scale house-building programme.
All very well. Only the shadow chancellor’s Today programme interview took a turn for the worse when McDonnell tried to explain how his party would fund this. He appeared to concede this would mean borrowing – along with a mega-crackdown on tax avoidance and changes to corporation tax. But the most telling point in the interview came when he was asked about a comment he made at Labour conference when he said that his party was ‘wargaming’ and this included preparing for a ‘run on the pound’ if Labour were elected. It’s a comment that the Conservatives have latched onto ever since as an effective attack method – with Theresa May citing it as recently as Wednesday during PMQs.
Keen to correct himself, today the shadow chancellor attempted a change of tack.
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