"The death rattle of a tired and discredited Government"

George Osborne warned the Budget was not the "routemap to recovery" that Britain needs and described it instead as "the death rattle of a tired and discredited Government”.

The Shadow Chancellor stressed the Budget had unravelled in under an hour, after the International Monetary Fund released growth forecasts that completely contradicted the “fantastically optimistic” forecasts which Mr Darling had presented to the house.

The Chancellor claimed the economy was going to go from a 3.5% contraction to 3.5% growth within two years, but the IMF said the recovery would be much slower.

George said, “The tragedy of yesterday was that instead of being honest about that mess, taking responsibility for the mistakes made and giving us a credible plan to pull Britain through, we got that complete fantasy.”

He welcomed Labour’s decision to come off their spending plans, pointing out that the Conservatives have been “telling them to do that for months”.

But he criticised Labour for only deciding to reign in public spending from 2011 onwards, and accused them of ducking the “tough decisions”:

“We have moved from the age of prosperity to an age of austerity, but the current leadership of the Labour Party have been left behind.”

The introduction of a 50% tax rate in the Budget broke one of the central promises election of Labour’s election manifesto – but George stressed that this “headline-grabbing measure” would actually raise less money than the National Insurance rise on jobs and on people earning over £20,000 a year.

“For years (Gordon Brown) said the choice was between the many versus the few. Now he is raising taxes on the many AND the few – including a tax on jobs in a recovery.”