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[/audioplayer]Jeremy Corbyn’s response to today’s Budget was fine on paper. It included a proper response to the policies that were announced, rather than the Labour leader merely ranting about what he had thought might be in the Budget when he wrote the draft a few hours earlier. He did include the sorts of lines that every Budget response from an Opposition leader and campaigning organisation must include, such as ‘it doesn’t go far enough’. But he did also welcome policies such as the sugar tax, and managed a couple of decent jokes.
His opening line was that ‘the Budget that the Chancellor has just delivered is actually the culmination of six years of his failures. It’s a recovery built on sand and a Budget of failure. He’s failed on the budget deficit, failed on debt, failed on investment, failed on productivity, failed on trade deficit, failed on the welfare cap, failed to tackle inequality in this country’. What was striking about this opener was not so much what the Labour leader was saying, which was no different to the sort of things Ed Miliband and Ed Balls would produce in response to economic statements, but the way the rest of the Labour party responded. Or didn’t respond. They were as inert as the noble gases. Normally the Opposition backbenches are highly reactive, fizzing with excitement as their party hacks into the Budget. And if a party leader starts a refrain like ‘failed…failed…failed’ as Corbyn did, you’d expect his backbenchers to join in shouting that word. Today they didn’t.
As Corbyn’s absolutely passable response went on, most Labour MPs became very interested indeed in their phones or the Budget documents that were being passed around the Chamber. They looked as engaged in the actual goings on in the Commons as people on a packed tube train are engaged in what their fellow passengers are up to. The problem, though, wasn’t the sort of response that Corbyn produced, which was fine given the circumstances. It was that it was him standing at the Dispatch Box. His delivery of the passable response was poor, too, with the Labour leader clearly nervous and gabbling some of his lines. He did not look like a statesman as he gave the speech. And he did not look like he was leading his party, either. His closing lines made sense on paper, but were delivered in a terrible, halting manner.
‘Let us harness the optimism the enthusiasm the hope the energy of young people…[pause] not burden them with debts and unaffordable housing, [pause] low wage jobs and zero hours contracts but instead act in an intergenerational way to give young people the opportunities and the chances they want to build a better, freer, more equal… [awkward pause] [laughter from Tory MPs]… more content!… Britain than this Chancellor of the Exchequer has proved he is utterly incapable of doing with his Budget today.’
As for Labour MPs, they didn’t cheer. Some gathered up their papers and got up as though they’d finally got to the end of a talk on the health and safety procedures in the building and needed to get on with some urgent filing.
A strange coda to the speech was Andrew Tyrie using his speech as chair of the Treasury Select Committee to pressure Corbyn on his political beliefs. He said:
‘The leader of the Opposition has made the most difficult speech of the parliamentary year, he’s responding to a Budget that he hasn’t seen, I haven’t seen it either as a matter of fact. I’d be interested to know if he feels it was the speech of a democratic socialist, I think it was. It was certainly spoken with great sincerity. But I wonder whether he can nod and tell me whether he agrees or disagrees whether as John Smith and Tony Blair did, he now accepts that a capitalist economy properly regulated is the most powerful source of prosperity and growth yet invented? I’m not going to put him under any pressure.’
Corbyn ended up nodding, then shaking his head and mouthing at Tory MPs that he wasn’t nodding.
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