Ed Balls has accused George Osborne of planning cuts so severe they would take Britain back to the 1930s era of the depression.
The shadow chancellor said if Labour wins the election, he would have to make cuts every year of the next parliament until the deficit is gone but would not be doing it in such an ideological and extreme way as the current chancellor.
“It would be so extreme to go back to a 1930s Britain,” he said. “I don’t want to have our children grow up in a society where people sit behind fences because there are not any police, or where children born into poverty stay in poverty, or where our National Health Service becomes Americanised.”
Balls said he could not give a timetable or specify where the savings would be made, but some departments such as the NHS and foreign aid would be ringfenced. He also gave a strong hint that schools would be protected.
Balls’s warning echoes the comments of the BBC political correspondent Norman Smith, who drew the ire of the chancellor for suggesting the scale of the cuts could lead the UK back to the world of George Orwell’s depression-era book The Road to Wigan Pier.
This provoked a furious row between Osborne and the BBC, with the chancellor accusing the broadcaster of hyperbolic coverage.
The BBC staunchly defended its reporting as the Office for Budget Responsibility had pointed out the cuts would reduce public spending to levels last seen in the 30s.
Balls made the remarks on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, ahead of a speech on the economy by Labour leader Ed Miliband.
Miliband will claim Labour is engaged in a fight for the soul of Britain and assert that Tory fiscal plans will mean disintegration of public services. He will also try to reassure those worried that Labour will ignore the deficit.
He will say: “Some people think the deficit simply does not matter to our mission and should not be our concern. They are wrong, it matters.”
He will warn that higher interest payments on debt will take money from public services and investment in the long-term potential of the economy. He will say: “Higher spending is not the answer to the long-term economic crisis we have identified. Unless we fundamentally reshape out economy, we will only be able ever to compensate people for unfairness and inequality.”
Painting as lurid a picture of the Tory spending plans as possible, he will also say: “This is now a fight for the soul of our country. It is a fight about who we want to be, and how we want to live together. The Tory vision is clear: the wealthiest being looked after, everybody else on their own, public services not there when you need them.”
