George Osborne’s newspaper slams the net immigration cap in the Evening Standard as ‘economically illiterate’ – but didn’t he design it HIMSELF?
Yesterday the former Chancellor hit out at the PM for backing the 'rash' target again, but a new book claims he came up with the idea
GEORGE Osborne designed the net immigration cap he attacked yesterday as “economically illiterate”, it has emerged.
A biography of the ex-Chancellor credits him with putting together the promise to slash net migration to 100,000 in 2010.
Janan Ganesh, an FT columnist, wrote: “Two of the Coalition’s most vivid retail policies – the cap on immigration and on household benefits – were designed by Osborne.”
The credit threatens to humiliate the ex-Chancellor – given a blistering attack on Theresa May over the net immigration target by the Evening Standard newspaper he now edits.
In a withering leader by the paper yesterday, Mr Osborne said the net migration target was “rash and economically illiterate”.
And he claimed no one in the Cabinet supports the target except Theresa May.
The editorial read: “It remains a mystery why the Prime Minister has recommitted her party to reduce net migration to the tens of thousands a year.
“You would assume that Mrs May would jump at the chance to bury the pledge.
“That’s what her Cabinet assumed; none of its senior members supports the pledge in private and all would be glad to see the back of something that has caused the Conservative Party such public grief.”
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Challenged this morning, Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt insisted the Cabinet were “completely behind” Theresa May on the target.
He told BBC Radio 4: “We believe that the worst possible thing we could do is to take that Brexit vote and to pretend that we were listening to it and then not actually listen to the real message which is that many people have concerns about immigration.
“What Theresa May is saying is well I’m not going to ignore those concerns, I’m going to listen to those concerns because that is the kind of Prime Minister she wants to be.”
The PM promised to stick to the promise during a campaign event last week – and vowed it would be in the manifesto.
The ex MP, who has now stood down as the member for Tatton, used his first front page as Editor to twist the knife into the PM over Brexit – and called her election campaign “no more than a slogan”.
The paper’s main story reported the relationship between Brussels and Downing Street going downhill after Jean Claude Juncker mocked Mrs May.
And he tweeted out a political cartoon featuring the PM as Big Ben – chiming “strong and stable!”
Theresa May famously sacked the former Chancellor George Osborne when she became PM last summer after David Cameron was forced to quit following the referendum result.
Also expected in Theresa May's manifesto launch today:
- SCRAP £200 a year Winter Fuel Payments for the considerable majority of Britain’s 12million pensioners
- USE the billions to guarantee any poorer OAPs with cash and assets of less than £100,000 will be exempt from care charges
- END the pension triple lock which guarantees a minimum annual rise in state pensions, to take on 'inter-generational unfairness'
- ABANDON a pledge not to raise National Insurance Contributions — but recommit the Tories to long-promised income tax cuts for basic and higher rate taxpayers.
- TOUGHEN immigration controls by doubling the charge companies must pay to bring skilled workers in from outside the EU.
