Friday 16 October 2015

Osborne's Magic Charter

The parliamentary Labour Party finally reached the right position on the footling Charter for Budget Responsibility debated last Wednesday. Footling, because it used up parliamentary time on an ordinance which shadow chancellor McDonnell pointed out "is difficult to take seriously [...] when time after time the Chancellor has come to Parliament to revise his own charter. It is difficult to take it seriously when he has consistently failed to meet his own targets." (Hansard 14 Oct 2015 : Column 434)  Personally, I would like to have seen all the opposition parties vacate the Chamber to point up the gimmicky nature of Osborne's unamendable Order, but at the very least Mr McDonnell and Ms Harman could have avoided tying themselves in knots in the first place.

The Liberal Democrat statement on the matter is here.


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