Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has blasted Conservative plans to borrow billions while cutting taxes as financially “irresponsible”.
The pound plummeted to 37 year lows against the dollar after Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng announced the biggest raft of tax cuts for half a century in a bid to raise falling living standards by boosting growth.
Using more than £70 billion of increased borrowing, Mr Kwarteng on Friday set out a package which included abolishing the top rate of income tax for the highest earners.
He cut stamp duty for homebuyers, and brought forward a cut to the basic rate of income tax, to 19p in the pound, a year early, to April, as part of tax cuts costing up to £45 billion annually.
Mr Corbyn said he “had more of a smile”, when Mr Kwarteng announced his mini-budget in the Commons on Friday.
“I was thinking [about] all the condemnation I received for putting forward a proposal for a national investment bank and regional investment banks and investment banks for Scotland and Wales and Northern Ireland and was told this was grossly irresponsible,” he told BBC Radio 4.
“[Then-shadow chancellor] John McDonnell at the same time had said we would not borrow to cover day-to-day spending, we would only borrow for investment.”
He said the Government were now borrowing billions “to pay for for day-to-day expenditure because they’ve just cut their own income level”.
In a wide-ranging interview with Nick Robinson he also branded about plans for delegates to sing God Save the King at the conference, “very, very odd”.
“They’ve never done it before, there’s never been any demand to do it,” he said.
“We don’t as a country routinely go around singing the national anthem at every single event we go to. We don’t sing in schools, we don’t have the raising of the flag as they do in the USA and other places. We are not that sort of, what I would call, excessively nationalist.”
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Kwasi Kwarteng defended his mini-budget rejecting the suggestion it was “a gamble” as reaction on the markets saw the pound drop instantly.
Mr Kwarteng admitted that the UK was “technically” in a recession but insisted the measures would make sure any diip would be shallow.
He told the BBC: “Technically, the Bank of England said that there was a recession, I think it’ll be shallow and I hope that we can rebound and grow.”
Pressed on whether he was acknowledging there was a recession, he said: “I’m not acknowledging that, no no, I said that there is technically a recession.
“We’ve had two quarters of very little, negative growth and I think these measures are going to help us drive growth.”
Liz also Truss defended the tax cuts, saying her Government is “incentivising businesses to invest and we’re also helping ordinary people with their taxes”.
Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Chris Philp claimed the Government was trying to do what’s “right” and not worry about the “politics of envy”.
Jeremy Corbyn’s interview with Nick Robinson will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 at 5.30pm on Saturday and will also be available on BBC Sounds and the Political Thinking website.
