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| * Paul Waugh |
by Paul Waugh | Opinion
It’s the last PMQs before the EU referendum and the big question is whether Tory Eurosceptics will let rip at David Cameron and George Osborne. Jeremy Corbyn has a tricky problem: does he go easy on the PM and instead train his fire on the ‘right-wing Tory/UKIP Brexiteers’ who will slash the NHS, hit the poor, kill workers’ rights etc? If he does, he may for once be singing from the same hymn sheet as the official Remain camp.
Today we've seen the spectacle of a tag-team of Alistair Darling (who was on GMB, Sky and LBC) and George Osborne (on Radio 4's Today) setting out a post-Brexit Budget that would threaten to put 2p on income taxes, hike fuel duty and slash £30bn from public services like health, education and defence. It’s Project Fear at Defcon One.
Osborne told Today: “It would be self-imposed austerity for many years to come”. “When we walk through that door next Thursday, there is no coming back. It’s going to be a one-way exit.” Mishal Husain spotted the main flaw in the Punishment Budget idea: Labour won’t vote for it, and together with Eurosceptic Tory MPs (57 Tories say they won’t back it), it just wouldn’t get through the House of Commons.
Yet the real nuclear bomb could be even scarier: dropping what some insiders are now calling ‘the O-bomb’. According to rumours swirling around Whitehall and Westminster, Osborne could hint in his Mansion House speech tomorrow night that the markets could be forced to suspend trading the day after a Brexit vote. The Express reports the claim, with Liam Fox hitting back that it “smacks of complete desperation”. A senior Remain source tells the paper: “This is why Labour was so confident to warn about an emergency budget last week, because John McDonnell’s office has received this briefing directly from the Treasury.”
After our Telegraph-HuffPost-YouTube EUDebate last night, Priti Patel told me that if the Chancellor were to try to talk about suspending City trading, that would be “totally irresponsible”. She pointed out that it was Bank of England Governor Mark Carney who had been spooking the markets with talk about sterling and interest rates. Some in Vote Leave fear this is a typical black op designed to cause more panic, with no fingerprints.
The way the markets plunged yesterday - with £34 bn wiped off the value of the FTSE in one day, the biggest since the 2008 crash - would be nothing compared to Osborne hinting at suspending trading. Would it be legal, would he even have any direct role in doing so? Vote Leavers say that he wouldn’t even be Chancellor after a Brexit vote. And Guido Fawkes says this is a classic e.g. of him dropping not just a cat on the table, but a Schrodinger’s cat.
Remain clearly thinks that fear works, and is doubling down on it. And this talk of a Brexit Budget within weeks of a result is meant to spark an immediacy to the fear that has previously only been focused on claims such as a recession ‘within a year’ and so on.
The Sun reports that the PM could ‘punish’ Theresa May for not being vocal enough to support the Remain campaign. Is that yet more evidence of panic? I’m told that during cross-party conference calls, No10 sounds increasingly angry, resorting to swearing and lashing out at anyone not on message. But the message seems to change some days within hours, some complain.
It’s the last PMQs before the EU referendum and the big question is whether Tory Eurosceptics will let rip at David Cameron and George Osborne. Jeremy Corbyn has a tricky problem: does he go easy on the PM and instead train his fire on the ‘right-wing Tory/UKIP Brexiteers’ who will slash the NHS, hit the poor, kill workers’ rights etc? If he does, he may for once be singing from the same hymn sheet as the official Remain camp.
Today we've seen the spectacle of a tag-team of Alistair Darling (who was on GMB, Sky and LBC) and George Osborne (on Radio 4's Today) setting out a post-Brexit Budget that would threaten to put 2p on income taxes, hike fuel duty and slash £30bn from public services like health, education and defence. It’s Project Fear at Defcon One.
Osborne told Today: “It would be self-imposed austerity for many years to come”. “When we walk through that door next Thursday, there is no coming back. It’s going to be a one-way exit.” Mishal Husain spotted the main flaw in the Punishment Budget idea: Labour won’t vote for it, and together with Eurosceptic Tory MPs (57 Tories say they won’t back it), it just wouldn’t get through the House of Commons.
Yet the real nuclear bomb could be even scarier: dropping what some insiders are now calling ‘the O-bomb’. According to rumours swirling around Whitehall and Westminster, Osborne could hint in his Mansion House speech tomorrow night that the markets could be forced to suspend trading the day after a Brexit vote. The Express reports the claim, with Liam Fox hitting back that it “smacks of complete desperation”. A senior Remain source tells the paper: “This is why Labour was so confident to warn about an emergency budget last week, because John McDonnell’s office has received this briefing directly from the Treasury.”
After our Telegraph-HuffPost-YouTube EUDebate last night, Priti Patel told me that if the Chancellor were to try to talk about suspending City trading, that would be “totally irresponsible”. She pointed out that it was Bank of England Governor Mark Carney who had been spooking the markets with talk about sterling and interest rates. Some in Vote Leave fear this is a typical black op designed to cause more panic, with no fingerprints.
The way the markets plunged yesterday - with £34 bn wiped off the value of the FTSE in one day, the biggest since the 2008 crash - would be nothing compared to Osborne hinting at suspending trading. Would it be legal, would he even have any direct role in doing so? Vote Leavers say that he wouldn’t even be Chancellor after a Brexit vote. And Guido Fawkes says this is a classic e.g. of him dropping not just a cat on the table, but a Schrodinger’s cat.
Remain clearly thinks that fear works, and is doubling down on it. And this talk of a Brexit Budget within weeks of a result is meant to spark an immediacy to the fear that has previously only been focused on claims such as a recession ‘within a year’ and so on.
The Sun reports that the PM could ‘punish’ Theresa May for not being vocal enough to support the Remain campaign. Is that yet more evidence of panic? I’m told that during cross-party conference calls, No10 sounds increasingly angry, resorting to swearing and lashing out at anyone not on message. But the message seems to change some days within hours, some complain.
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* Paul Waugh Is The Executive Editor, HuffPost, UK.
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