David Blackburn

George Osborne’s benefits speech – full text

George Osborne’s speech is below. As you will see, it is a bold defence of the government’s policies on tax and welfare, including the 50p rate cut. There was a clear moral tone to Osborne’s words, which may go some way to challenging the notion that he is an insubstantial political figure. It was, he implied, wrong to delay deficit reduction, wrong to penalise work, wrong to condemn people to poverty.

There was bald politics too as he sought the votes of ‘hard-working families’. He attacked the ‘vested interests’ which were on the wrong side of the debate, goading them to carry on complaining and alienate themselves. This simple strategy has already worked: the leadership of Unite has just issued a predictable reaction: “‘Economic Dracula’ Osborne emerges to suck more life out of the economy.”

It wasn’t all plain sailing. There are questions over his figures: prompted by the distribution of a speech from CCHQ, which gave different numbers and marginally different emphasis on Labour’s role in our difficulties.

A communications cock-up? Surely not. This incident has marred an otherwise successful outing.

Osborne’s speech

Good afternoon, thank you for inviting me to be here at Morrison’s today.

One of your company slogans – “every penny matters” – is a very fitting catchphrase for what I want to talk about.

I want to talk about the major changes we’re making to our tax and welfare system this month. Changes that are all about making sure that we use every penny we can to back hard working people who want to get on in life.

Changes that are all about backing people like you.

For too long, we’ve had a system where people who did the right thing – who get up in the morning and work hard – felt penalised for it, while people who did the wrong thing got rewarded for it.

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