ANY pretence that Chancellor Osborne has kept his pledge to eliminate the deficit has been exposed as pure fantasy.

Even the Tory-supporting Daily Mail has had to come clean about the scale of Osborne’s failure, due mainly to his own actions and the result of his failed austerity programme, which resulted in a crash in tax receipts and a doubling of government borrowing.

The office of budget responsibility tells us that due to his failure an extra £48 billion will need to be to cut if he wants to balance the books in the next five years. Osborne was warned that he was taking a huge gamble by trying to reduce the deficit by cuts alone, a gamble that has failed, with the price of that failure being paid for by workers and the vulnerable. Have no doubt that given the chance Osborne will aim his cuts at the same group of people while pledging to cut the taxes of top earners at a cost of £7 billion a year.

We are still waiting to see how he would pay for his £7 billion pound giveaway, however we all know whose side Mr Osborne is on, and it’s not ordinary workers who have seen their incomes fall further and further behind the cost of living.

Nigel Dix, Montclaire Avenue, Blackwood