Stephen Hepburn: Tories caught out over Budget cuts

Scratch a Tory and you'll always find a tax raiser, not a cutter.Theresa May and Philip Hammond are the '˜Bonnie and Clyde' of British politics after they were rumbled in the Budget.
Chancellor Philip HammondChancellor Philip Hammond
Chancellor Philip Hammond

The Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer are planning to grab more in tax than Labour’s Gordon Brown and Tony Blair ever did.

You have to go back all of 30 years to the terrible reign of Margaret Thatcher to last find a Government taking 37% of the nation’s income.

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So all the Conservative spin about cutting taxes is Tory deceit and I’ll give Chancer Hammond a backhanded compliment for blowing his party’s cover.

Brexit with all its huge challenges requires a safe pair of hands in the Treasury and Britain’s lumbered with a bad joker.

If he’d spent more time doing his sums and less rehearsing unfunny gags, Spreadsheet Phil mightn’t be the biggest joke of all.

Hammond’s predecessor, Gideon Osborne, who famously stated “we’re all in this together” wasn’t being true unless he’s going to find grafters, disabled, young, unemployed and pensioners a £650,000 one day a week job like his own which isn’t going to happen.

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And Hammond nailed May’s fib that she’s creating a “country that works for everyone” when the small print of the Budget reveals the Tories in this Parliament are deliberately making a third of our population harder up!

In this Budget according to the Independent Institute of Fiscal Studies the average individual is set to lose £550 and the poorest 10 per cent a whacking £1,300! Where is the fairness in that?

Hammond breaking an electoral promise and hammering the self-employed such as our local taxi drivers, construction workers and everybody else working for themselves, was breathtaking Tory hypocrisy.

We know you can’t trust the Tories so it’s no surprise to us when they are caught red-handed and the scoundrels contemptuously deny the truth.

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Of the 2.5 million people he’d clobber, most are basic rate tax payers so I pledge a Labour Government would go after rich bankers and Fat Cats who are getting a £70 billion windfall off the Tories not drivers and plumbers working hard for a basic living.

Labour in power would also introduce a real living wage of £10 per hour and give all workers proper rights to end the curse of job insecurity like zero-hours contracts.

Hammond’s Budget did nothing for the NHS, little for social care and will damage education when precious funds won’t go to our local schools but their pet Tory projects.

This Tory mob’s guilty once again of failing to address the needs of the majority in favour of an ideological obsession.

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The Prime Minister jumped the democratic gun in suggesting new Grammars will be established under her watch, meaning a new school might open into which the vast majority of local parents couldn’t get their children into.

This policy wasn’t in the Tory manifesto so May has no mandate, and it is extreme arrogance to spend our money on a policy that has no Parliamentary approval when she’s stealing the dinner money of existing pupils.

I’m the first to acknowledge Labour nationally must unite to do better and it could take a leaf out of our performance on South Tyneside where our council is full of brilliant councillors focused on improving life for everybody in our communities.

The Tories are beatable and are there for the taking. Bonnie ‘May’ and Clyde ‘Hammond’ are a comedy duo. And people aren’t laughing with them. We’re all heckling the smug pair after that financially and politically bankrupt Budget that does nothing for us on South Tyneside!