Osborne mocks Labour’s ‘squeezed muddle’
George Osborne has attacked Ed Miliband’s attempts to win support from the “squeezed middle”.
The chancellor pointed out Mr Miliband’s last definition of the ‘squeezed middle’ covered 90% of taxpayers in a comment piece for the Guardian newspaper.
He argued that Labour’s economic policies were so contradictory that, were they implemented in government, they “would not survive first contact with reality”.
The cause of current economic problems, Mr Osborne said, was that global increases in food and commodity prices had combined with “the unwinding, through a 25% currency depreciation and an unavoidable fiscal consolidation, of economic imbalances built up under Labour”.
“My party learned the hard way over 13 years that opposition without a credible alternative tends to remain just that: opposition,” he wrote.
“The real squeeze is not on the middle, but on Labour’s muddle.”
Mr Miliband did not mention the phrase in his speech yesterday in which he outlined his fears of a “cost of living crisis”.
He did not abandon the rhetoric entirely, however, as he discussed the “squeezed wages, squeezed prospects [and] squeezed aspirations” of ordinary Brits.
Mr Osborne said Labour was isolated in opposing the coalition’s deficit reduction agenda, citing support from the G20, OECD, IMF and European Commission.
“That doesn’t look like an ideological line-up to me,” he added. “Quite the reverse: it is close to a domestic and international consensus.”
Mr Miliband is pressing ahead with his party’s policy review, which highlighted research showing over a fifth of increased wages between 1979 and 2005 went to the highest earners.
Yesterday shadow chief secretary to the Treasury Angela Eagle announced details of Labour’s review into life on low-pay in Britain. Shadow work and pensions secretary Liam Byrne did the same for a review of future challenges for the welfare state. Both will inform shadow chancellor Ed Balls’ wider economic policy review.
