Tom Peck's Sketch: From Geoffrey to Bungle – George Osborne under pressure from angry members
It is now certain welfare payments definitely won’t be cut, because the Chancellor currently has 'no plans' to cut them
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Your support makes all the difference.George Osborne, it can now be confirmed beyond all doubt, “has no plans for cuts to welfare payments” for the rest of this parliament.
That’s good to know. If you’re one of the 190,000 people who receive money from the Government to pay people to help you get dressed and go to the toilet then relax, breathe out, you’ve definitely got nothing to worry about.
It is now a certainty that all welfare payments of any kind definitely won’t be cut either this year, next year, or for any of the three years after that, because the Chancellor currently has “no plans” to cut them, as he told the Treasury Select Committee on Thursday. Independent forecasts indicate by 2020 they’ll have risen to £20bn above George’s own self-imposed cap, but panic ye not, there are “no plans” to cut them, everything will be fine.
As it happens, I currently have no plans to go on holiday in 2020, 2019, or indeed 2016, which you quite rightly deduce also means I won’t be going away any time in the next four years. If there are no current plans, then it just can’t happen.
Which is a pity, as after turning up to the Treasury Select Committee on Thursday morning for the latest stop on the George Osborne Sorry I Tried to Screw Over The Disabled World Tour, I could really do with one.
But if you’re planning a holiday, you must do your bit for the nation and book it at travel agents. “Going into a travel agent to book your holiday is more productive than booking it online,” George also claimed, in one of many curious attempts to explain why productivity forecasts have nosedived. They’re not as bad as they look, but it still needs to be planned for, but definitely not by cutting the welfare budget.
Labour’s Wes Streeting had one go at the Chancellor about this in the Commons on Monday, but that wasn’t going to stop him having another.
“When President Obama visits next week he’ll probably think you’ve changed your name from Geoffrey to Bungle,” he told him. It transpires that when Obama was last here, he repeatedly called George Osborne ‘Geoffrey’, quite understandably mistaking him for his favourite black, 68-year-old R’n’B singer. There may be one or two people out there who might not have got it immediately, but mercifully none are on the Treasury Select Committee.
In any event, whether the President of the United States was an avid watcher of Rainbow while growing up in Hawaii and Indonesia in the years before ITV began broadcasting is not something the White House has yet been able to confirm. In the meantime, George – or rather Gideon – just stared at him blankly.
This might have been the final time, at least in a formal capacity, the Chancellor will have to explain why he promised to cut payments to the disabled and was then forced to change his mind. “I am prepared to take difficult decisions to improve the state of the public finances,” he said. And yes, if it includes taking three and half grand a year out of the pockets of people who can’t dress themselves in the morning, then I am prepared to take that decision. Unfortunately, when it turns out that in fact we live in a democracy and nobody actually wants this done, I’ll go back on this decision, and then claim that it didn’t actually need to be made in the first place.
That, right there, is leadership, and we only look forward to the President telling Geoffrey just as much next week.
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