Osborne and Cooper’s knockabout

Far more heat than light generated by this afternoon’s urgent question on welfare spending – but a telling spectacle nonetheless. The question had been put forward by a dissenting Lib Dem voice, Bob Russell, and it was up to George Osborne to answer it. He did so with sweeping observations, and attacks on Labour, rather than specifics. And so we never really got into the small print of those £4 billion extra benefit cuts, but Osborne did wonder why Labour have never apologised for “leaving the country with the worst public finances in its history.” It was knockabout stuff.  

This is not to say that Osborne was ineffective. In party political terms, he had a message – and he pushed it as far as he could. After Yvette Cooper’s punchy set of questions, the chancellor countered, “Where are [Labour’s] numbers? Where are their ideas? If they want to engage with us, then they need some plans of their own.”