UK’s Osborne woos voters with earlier end to austerity

Monday, 23 March 2015 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, holds up his budget case for the cameras as he stands outside number 11 Downing Street, before delivering his budget to the House of Commons, in central London 18 March 2015 - Reuters LONDON (Reuters): British Finance Minister George Osborne sought to court voters ahead of a tight 7 May election by pitching an earlier end to his austerity drive and cautious tax cuts against a backdrop of faster economic growth. Osborne said Prime Minister David Cameron’s government had saved Britain’s economy and would bring down national debt earlier than forecast with a 22 billion-pound sale of state-owned bank assets. Osborne aimed to blunt one of the main lines of attack from the opposition Labour Party, which has focused on his previous plans to shrink state spending to a size not seen since before World War Two. He surprised economists by slashing the size of the budget surplus he is aiming for by the end of the decade, assuming his Conservative Party retains power in May. “We took difficult decisions in the teeth of opposition and it worked - Britain is walking tall again,” Osborne said. “This is the budget for Britain, the comeback country,” he concluded at the end of an hour-long speech, sitting down to roars of support from Conservative Party lawmakers, even if some of their hopes for bigger tax giveaways were disappointed. Osborne also earned a pat on the arm from Cameron, whose central bet since 2010 has been that economic recovery would turn into political gold for the Conservatives and overshadow the pain caused from years of austerity. Seven weeks before an election that opinion polls show is too close to call, the 43-year-old Chancellor of the Exchequer announced modest increases in Britain’s expected economic growth in 2015 and 2016. Osborne had been handed an unexpected windfall by a plunge in global oil prices and falling inflation. But rather than spend the money on major tax cuts, Osborne sought to nix one of Labour’s main lines of attack by cutting the budget surplus target he set as recently as December.