Boneheaded chancellor renews war on workers

He ran amok with a vicious new attack on public-spending programmes, axing an extra £11.5 billion by 2015.

The Chancellor and ex-Bullingdon Club toff was denounced as "economically illiterate" by PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka as many thousands of his public-service members staged a Budget Day strike.

Mr Serwotka warned that the government's austerity policies were making the economic crisis much worse.

Mr Osborne ordered Britain's workers to endure yet more years of austerity, while corporation tax on companies will be cut even further to 20 per cent by 2015 - the lowest rate of any major economy.

Public-sector pay will be slashed again in real terms by extending the 1 per cent pay cap for a further year to 2015-16, plus a major attack on incremental scales to make "substantial savings."

Delivering his Budget in the Commons, Mr Osborne blamed the eurozone crisis for knocking Britain's economy, leading to a halved growth forecast of just 0.6 per cent from the tame Office for Budget Responsibility.

He declared amid Labour jeers: "It is taking longer than anyone hoped, but we must hold to the right track."

General union GMB general secretary Paul Kenny commented: "Osborne sticking to plan A after three years fits Einstein's definition of insanity, which is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

The Budget contained new schemes to boost house buying by offering 20 per cent government loans for newly built homes and offering guarantees to support £130 billion-worth of mortgages.

Businesses will enjoy national insurance concessions which take the first £2,000 off the NI bill of every company.

A timid programme of infrastructure projects costing £3bn will be financed from cuts elsewhere in public spending and a long-promised Business Bank will finally be established by the end of 2014 to deploy £1bn of new capital for small and medium enterprises.

The income tax threshold on personal earnings will be boosted to £10,000 by 2014.

Overall tax cuts of £9.4bn will be paid for by crippling public-spending cuts, which are a shocking £1.5bn deeper than the £10bn previously announced.

Welfare cuts will be held at £5bn - after haggling within the Con-Dem coalition halted Tory plans for even more vicious measures.

The Chancellor attempted to put a gloss on his grim Budget by announcing a cut of 1p in the price of a pint of beer from Sunday night and scrapping a further 3p rise in beer duty which had been planned for this year.

Rail union RMT general secretary Bob Crow said: "This is the same old mixture of cuts and austerity from this government of the rich for the rich.

"It will do nothing to tackle the evils of poverty and unemployment that are devastating the lives of millions of people."

Communist Party general secretary Rob Griffiths accused the Chancellor of offering only peanuts for home buying and childcare while continuing his relentless drive to dismantle the welfare state and privatise our public services.

"It's tax cuts for big business, bonuses for bankers and more pay cuts and redundancies for workers," said Mr Griffiths.