Disco chancer

PM would need to find billions to fund end of austerity pledge, says top financial watchdog

USUALLY it’s a Budget speech that falls apart after 24 hours. But Theresa May’s “disco queen” speech, in which she signalled the end of austerity, hardly made it to the end of the Abba soundtrack before being exposed as a fraud.

Labour’s John McDonnell was quick out of the blocks to call the pledge a con. With billions of welfare cuts still in the pipeline and the effects of eight years of impoverishing people taking its toll, it would take more than a shimmy across the stage to end austerity.

McDonnell would, of course, call out May. He’s the opposition, after all. But now the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the financial referee in these political disputes, have waded in and said May would have to find £20billion just to stand still and prevent more cuts.

The sums don’t add up, and are unlikely to if the economy takes a brutal hit from Brexit next year.

HOLYROOD leaders came together to show support for an anti-poverty drive yesterday. But they couldn’t agree on what to do about the problem.

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon posed for photos outside the chamber, with rivals Ruth Davidson, Patrick Harvie and Willie Rennie and Presiding Officer Ken Macintosh, to back Challenge Poverty Week, an awareness campaign by The Poverty Alliance.

Inside, however, she had to defend her Government as Labour leader Richard Leonard condemned the SNP’s record and demanded a £5 rise in child benefit.

He said: “This policy has support across civic Scotland, from anti-poverty BY ANDY PHILIP organisations to faith groups, from children’s charities to the Scottish TUC.

“We cannot afford more children growing up in grinding poverty as a result of this Government’s failure to do more than tinker around the edges.”

But Sturgeon said the Government would find a better way of getting support to those who need it.

She added: “What we’re looking at is the best way to do that, because with the policy that Richard Leonard is proposing, seven out of every £10 would go to families who are not living in poverty.”

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation said this week that one in four children are living in poverty.