Today was the day that George Osborne was meant to have cleared the deficit.

It was the reason he gave five years ago for the austerity many of our communities have suffered from.

But now we will have austerity for a decade.

If it wasn’t for Labour’s campaign on tax credit cuts over the past few months forcing the Chancellor to think again, then we would not be reading about a u-turn from him today.

Nor would he have changed his reckless decision to cut front-line policing.

However, according to leading think-tanks, 140,000 working families already on universal credit will still lose over £3 billion over the next 5 years despite his u-turn.

We already know that this is an Autumn Statement that will hurt working families hard.

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For example, what the Tories won’t tell you is that a full-time single parent with two children on Universal Credit and in a minimum wage job will lose £2,400 next year due to the Chancellor’s cuts.

Nor will they boast about the fact that disposable household income is not going up by as much as they previously said - meaning households making less money go even further.
Response: Shadow Chancellor responds to the Autumn Statement in the House of Commons (
Image:
REUTERS)

They won’t tell you either that average pay isn’t expected to go up over the next five years by as much as they said before.

Working families cannot be made to suffer while millionaires are still being given a tax cut by this Tory Government.

And he has sold off our shares in the banks just so he can save himself from further embarrassment.

Otherwise, he’d have missed his own debt target for next year.

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But you can only sell off state assets once - when they’re gone, they’re gone.

We all know that in the last five years he sold off the family silver to his friends in the city - household names like Royal Mail sold off on the cheap.
Joke: John McDonnell offers a copy of Chairman Mao's Little Red Book to George Osborne (
Image:
PA)

But now he’s selling off the furniture and, with the sale of the Land

Registry, he’s even selling off the ground under our feet.

The truth is that the Chancellor’s announcement was all smoke and mirrors.

Because the devil is in the detail with these events in Westminster.

And over the next few days be in no doubt that under close scrutiny the Tory spin will unravel.

It is time George Osborne stopped the smoke and mirror tricks, and is just honest with the British people.

If he won’t - Labour will.

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