These children of Thatcher are free to cut, cut, cut – and they’re loving every minute | Polly Toynbee
Every new chancellor wants to set their own budget after an election. But George Osborne isn't a new chancellor. He inherits his own 2015-16 plan, and yet last night he told the Confederation of British Industry he will reopen it to cut more, tearing up every departmental and agency budget after contracts are signed halfway through the year.
A question: what is there in his spending plans that he dared not announce to voters before the election? It was already a piece of remarkable democratic arrogance that David Cameron and Osborne refused to say where the 12bn of benefit cuts would fall - and dereliction on the part of all the broadcasting interviewers not to hammer hard enough on this one point with every minister in their studios so as to force them to reply. But we shall see now, too late, exactly where the axe is falling on all the unprotected departments.
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