The In campaign believe that they win when the referendum debate is focused on the economy. So, today George Osborne and Alistair Darling are outlining a deliberately provocative post-Brexit emergency Budget. It is stuffed full of horrors: a 2p rise in the basic rate of income tax, a 3p rise in the higher rate and cuts to the NHS budget to name but a few. The plan is clear, to get the economy and the supposed effects on the public finances of Brexit to the top of the agenda.
Now, as Fraser and Jonathan Portes have pointed out these aren’t the kind of measures that a government would actually enact in the case of Brexit. But this move is designed to help get the Remain campaign over the line, and nothing else.
Brexit backing Tory MPs are furious about this.
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