At the the TUC Yorkshire & Humber region’s AGM, Labour’s shadow chancellor Ed Balls attacked the Tories for ‘taking Britain back to the 1980s’.

He said:

Across the north, south, east and west of our country we are starting to see the devastating effect of this government’s reckless plan to cut too deep and too fast.

David Cameron and George Osborne are trying to take us back to the 1980s – not just the hike in VAT and deep spending cuts, but trying to provoke confrontation with Labour councils like Liverpool and now with Thatcherite enterprise policies too.

The economy should be growing strongly this year, but instead thousands of jobs are being lost in both the public and private sectors and our economic recovery has stalled.

George Osborne just doesn’t get it. He doesn’t seem to understand that without strong economic growth and with unemployment now rising again, you cannot get the deficit down. And he seems to be in denial about the state of the economy he is responsible for.

When Labour left office our actions to support the recovery meant the economy was strengthening, inflation was lower and unemployment was falling. That’s why the deficit ended up being £20 billion lower than forecast last year.

Now we have the worst of all worlds – a stalled economy, consumer confidence collapsing, rising unemployment and rising inflation. But this Chancellor has no plan other than to carry on regardless with cuts that are too deep and too fast and aren’t working.

George Osborne needs to get his head out of the sand. He has just two weeks until the Budget to come up with a plan for jobs and growth that gets people into work and gets our economy moving again.

He should start by heeding Labour’s call to repeat last year’s £3.5 billion bank bonus tax and use that money to support the jobs and growth Britain badly needs this year.

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