Jeremy Corbyn plunges Labour’s economic policy further into chaos with two major Budget U-turns
Labour leader Mr Corbyn announced that he no longer supports Hammond's income tax cuts or the Tory benefits freeze
JEREMY Corbyn performed two major Budget U-turns yesterday as Labour’s economic policy plunged deeper into chaos.
His Shadow Chancellor announced Labour would no longer back Philip Hammond’s income tax cuts for 32 million workers just 24 hours after supporting the popular move.
And then Mr Corbyn declared for the first time that he would ditch the Tory benefits freeze and raise payouts in line with inflation.
Speaking at Prime Minister’s Questions yesterday he told MPs that Labour “would have ended the benefit freeze” if it had won last year’s General Election.
This is despite the Labour leader saying days before polling day that the party had “not made any commitment on that”.
Mr McDonnell was forced to cave into his Labour critics yesterday to announce the party would abstain on a vote on raising the personal allowance and higher rate threshold.
A Labour spokesman confirmed the party would vote against the Budget as a whole.
It came just 24 hours after Mr McDonnell explicitly backed the cuts, declaring: “We will support the tax cuts at the moment on the basis that it will inject some demand into the economy.”
He added: “We’re not going to take money out of people’s pockets.”
But yesterday his leader took a very different stance as the splits between the pair were laid bare.
Attacking the tax cut, Mr Corbyn asked the PM why the Government had not chosen to “to end the benefit freeze for 10 million households but instead field a tax cut for higher earners”.
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