[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/spectatorpolitics/summerbudget2015/media.mp3″ title=”Fraser Nelson, James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman discuss the Summer Budget”]
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[/audioplayer]When George Osborne lays a political elephant trap for Labour, he normally does so by cutting welfare and daring the Opposition to support him. Well, he’s done some of that today, cutting tax credits, housing benefit and the amount of money that employment support allowance claimants preparing to return to work can receive. But Labour has grown used to those traps now. What it isn’t used to navigating is responding to a measure that it would have introduced itself and which has a rather leftish feel.
The announcement of the National Living Wage, which Fraser and I examine here and here, right at the end of the Budget meant that Labour MPs were strangely frozen in position as Harriet Harman started speaking. Harman sounded rather as though she didn’t want to be there: indeed at one point during her speech, she paused as she was heckled by MPs opposite and I rather wondered whether she might be about to say ‘I can’t be bothered with this’.
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