ANY pretence that chancellorGeorge 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 the Chancellor’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 making uncosted promises worth £7 billion a year to cut the taxes of top earners, while the rest of us have seen our incomes fall as inflation outstrips wages. At the current rate of growth, wages will take 12 years to get back to 2008 levels of growth. We all know whose side Mr Osborne’ is on and it’s not ordinary workers.

Nigel Dix, Montclaire Avenue, Blackwood