Jeremy Hunt just made the case for why you should vote Labour
The chancellor and his shadow went head-to-head on the central election issue of tax and public spending... and Rachel Reeves won, writes John Rentoul
Jeremy Hunt simply cannot decide whether he is a nice guy or a ruthless political operator. Today he delivered a cynical pre-election exercise, taking the rules on civil-service impartiality to the limit by engaging Treasury officials to sell the message that Labour would raise taxes.
But he did it in a reasonable tone of voice, protesting repeatedly that he was being “transparent” and “completely open”. He said that he had asked his civil servants to take a cautious approach to costing Labour’s promises, taking the lowest of a range of estimates of the cost and not including promises – such as Labour’s plan to raise defence spending to 2.5 per cent of national income – that did not have a target date.
Even so, much to his feigned surprise and distress, he had to report that Labour’s plans would cost £10bn a year more than they would raise, and therefore that “taxes would go up under a future Labour government”.
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