Tax And Spending Row - Latest

Last night, the chief secretary to the Treasury, Liam Byrne accused shadow health secretary Andrew Lansley of deliberately promising that people would be allowed to keep more of their own money under a Conservative government.

Mr Byrne said:

This is the sort of irresponsible attitude we have come to expect from the Tory party. Time and time again this Labour Government has shown that the only responsible thing to do is to take as much money off ordinary working people as possible. After all, they’d only end up buying things for themselves, rather than on things that we hope will make a Labour Government look good, if only in the statistics.

In response, Andrew Lansley denied he had said any such thing:

All I said was that it may be a good idea to cut public spending a bit, and stop pissing away other people’s money on things that don’t work and are a waste of time, money and effort. Anyway, I used the magic political word ‘aspiration’ and had my fingers crossed behind my back, so everybody knows it doesn’t count.

The Conservative leader, David Cameron, directly after a private meeting with Mr Lansley, denied that his colleague had made a gaffe. As he wiped the bloodstains from his baseball bat, Mr Cameron said:

Frankly, we don’t much like the idea of allowing people to keep their own money almost as much as the Labour party. Think of what would happen to our poll ratings if we did actually make some spending cuts in one area, and a few weeks - or even months later - something goes horribly wrong in that same area. The press would crucify us. Despite most of the press that supports us calling on us to cut public spending, as soon as something goes tit-up they demand we do something about it and blame it on us for cutting spending. Quite simply, actually making any cuts at all just too much of a pain in the arse, though we will always promise to do it if it increases our opinion poll ratings, of course.

Sources close to the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, said he was too busy, doing his YouTube dance in glee at the news of the apparent Tory gaffe, to speak to our reporter. However, the PM’s office did issue the following statement:

This – the most long lasting Labour Government in history - has long held the view that allowing people to keep their own money is a weak and ineffective way of making sure it remains in power. It has been shown time and time again that the promise to spend more on things like Education and the NHS is always electorally popular, despite the obvious fact that massively increasing the amount spent in these areas has the seemingly paradoxical effect of only making things worse. However, the Labour government is still firmly committed to throwing increasing amounts of taxpayer’s hard-earned money at all areas of public spending in the hope that somehow it will magically make all the problems go away.