The Budget has left the two main parties' fiscal policies looking remarkably similar - but Labour will do its best to paint the Conservatives as untrustworthy
Laura Trott, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, said on Sunday: “For five days Labour have been unable to say how they’re going to pay for their unfunded spending commitments. That’s because they don’t have a plan to pay for it, and that means higher taxes, taking us back to square one.”. One Labour backbencher said that having the party’s policies adopted by the Conservatives was “flattering really”, adding: “I don’t think it creates a problem for Labour.
The Opposition is backing the 2p cut to national insurance, which was the centrepiece of Mr Hunt’s Budget, and other than a few specific programmes will not promise more state spending than in the plans set out by the Government, which independent experts mostly say are unrealistically stingy. Tory insiders compare it with previous political promises made without a firm timeframe, such as the 2010 vow to increase the income tax personal allowance to £10,000, which was eventually delivered.
The row will continue to rumble until the next general election, which is seen as increasingly likely to be in the autumn rather than in May, with the deadline for calling a poll on the same day as local elections on 2 May approaching in just over a fortnight and relatively few voter-friendly giveaways in the Budget.