#SummerBudget: Harman blasts chancellor's 'political' Budget
The government is playing party politics with the Budget and was "liberated from reality", says Harman
HARRIET HARMAN, Labour’s acting leader, predictably slammed George Osborne’s Budget speech, claiming “you can’t build a productive economy on a political slogan”.
Responding to the first fully Conservative budget speech since the suede shoe-sporting Ken Clarke in 1996, Harman said she attempted to resist the temptation to “oppose everything the government does”.
She said Labour would strive to be a “different kind” of opposition that would “fiercely oppose” policies that hit working people.
The government was playing party politics with the Budget and was “liberated from reality”.
Osborne said he would introduce a new national living wage which would hit £9 an hour by 2020, something Harman said families could still not “live on because of the cuts in tax credits.”
Harman slammed the government for pushing the electrification of the railway line between Manchester and Leeds into the proverbial sidings, claiming the “great Northern Powerhouse is starting to look like the great Northern power cut.”
She also said it was more important that the Conservatives helped people to buy a home rather than reduce inheritance tax.