Tag: George Osborne

George Osborne has said that MPs are being asked “to deliver something impossible” in leaving the EU without damaging Britain, calling for a long delay in the Brexit process. Speaking on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme before the People’s Vote demonstration, where hundreds of thousands of people will march through central London on Saturday, the former chancellor said: “If you ask politicians to deliver something impossible don’t be surprised if they cannot. “As it happens, if I was a hard Brexiteer … I’d just get out and rip the plaster off and endure the pain, but it’s a lot of pain and a big shock. The best outcome now would be a long delay, and it’s not the worst thing in the world to ask people to vote for some MEPs, and certainly better than stockpiling medicine and turning Kent into a car park. More than 4 million sign Brexit petition to revoke article 50 Read more “So I think the best outcome is a long delay where we rethink how we deliver on the referendum result and we try and find a majority for a compromise Brexit agreement and possibly have a second referendum.” Osborne was asked about calling Theresa May a “dead woman walking”, to which he said: “After that election she called [in 2017] … I never thought she could recover authority and I said it at the moment.” The education minister, Nadhim Zahawi, said: “If parliament decides to vote down the prime minister’s withdrawal agreement, then I think it would be political meltdown and parliament would have failed.” Zahawi also said he was not prepared to tell his constituents that the UK would take part in the EU elections. “Each and every one of us will have to ask ourselves the question: ‘Am I prepared to go back to my constituents and say we’re not leaving the EU, we’re going to go for a much longer extension, and we’re going to take part in the European elections?’ I’m not prepared to do that. I don’t think the prime minister is prepared to do that.” The comments came as hundreds of thousands of people head to London on Saturday to march on parliament calling for the public to be given a final say on Brexit. Protesters will travel from all over the UK and further afield for the People’s Vote campaign’s Put it to the People march, after a similar rally in October drew crowds of 700,000. The march will move from Park Lane to Parliament Square from midday, followed by a rally in front of parliament. Labour’s deputy leader, Tom Watson, is expected to tell crowds that he believes the only way to resolve the current impasse is “for people themselves to sign it off”.

Philip Hammond, the chancellor, has said that if the UK were to follow the advice of some Brexiters and refuse to pay anything to the EU in the event of a no deal Brexit, it would not be seen as a reliable partner for international trade. Philip Hammond told the committee earlier that, if the UK refused to pay anything to the EU in the event of a no deal Brexit - an option proposed by some Brexiters - it would not be seen as a reliable partner in future trade deals. No, says Hammond. No, says Hammond. Q: Why did you implement the tax cuts a year earlier than promised in the Tory manifesto? Hammond says the UK would have some leverage, in terms of when money was paid. Q: If there is a no deal Brexit, will all the budget spending commitments be honoured? Hammond suggests that, if there is no Brexit deal, spending commitments made in this year’s budget could be abandoned. But he told the House of Commons Treasury committee that the goal of balancing the nation’s books was “within touching distance”, with the Office for Budget Responsibility forecasting the deficit will be trimmed to 0.8% of GDP by 2023/24. Rather than making reducing the deficit the overriding goal of economic policy, it would be a matter for the chancellor at each budget over the next few years to strike a balance between getting borrowing down and other priorities like cutting taxes, increasing public spending and investing in the national infrastructure, he suggested.

Millions of British people are unhappy with the political choices being offered to them by the two main parties over Brexit, the former chancellor, George Osborne, has said. Osborne, who now edits London’s Evening Standard, said some of his former Conservative colleagues had expressed their surprise that his newspaper, which has repeatedly criticised Theresa May, took such a tough stance. “People say to me, ‘hold on, that’s very unfair, you’re a Conservative and you used to be in the Conservative cabinet, you’re being a bit mean,’” Osborne told the Advertising Week Europe conference in central London. He said this gap existed more generally: “On Brexit, I’m actually socking it as much to the Corbynites as I am to the hard Brexiteers. And that’s because I think there are millions of people in this city and around Britain who are not happy with the choice they’re being presented with at the moment.” Saying that he was “essentially unbiddable” when it came to political pressure, Osborne said his former job allowed him to help the paper’s reporters uncover stories. “My role now is to get to things which, in my previous job, I would not have told you,” he said. “I have a little bit of an advantage because I know where to look. I can say to my political team, ‘you go and find out this; I bet if you spoke to this person, who’s not obvious, you might find something interesting’.” We don’t actually have to have either Jeremy Corbyn or Jacob Rees-Mogg in this country This had not always gone down very well with former colleagues, Osborne explained: “One of the things that has surprised people in my former profession, the Conservative party, is that I’m pretty tough on them. People might have expected that but they have not expected that critical line of mine on things the government is doing, for example in the Brexit space.” Osborne reiterated that while he remained a Conservative, there was no guarantee the paper would take the same view: “If you assume that we are just going to back some (London) mayoral candidate on 2020 just because they’re a Conservative, forget it.” He said the newspaper would make a judgment on behalf of the people of London on “whether Sadiq Khan should get our support for a second term, or whether the Conservative candidate gets that”. The former chancellor dismissed the idea that the editorship was merely a springboard for a return to politics: “I’m going to stick around, because I’m having a great time.”