Jeremy Hunt lost it with the BBC this morning, accusing one of the corporation’s top stars of misleading listeners about the state of the economy.
Today presenter Amol Rajan asked whether Mr Hunt’s Budget “met the moment” given the problems the economy is facing.
He said: “This is a country ravaged by economic shocks – at best drifting, at worst stagnant.
“We all know about its potential, but you’ve had seven quarters of falling GDP per head – that’s been revised downwards – we’re hooked on foreign labour, the birth rate is collapsing, many public services are creaking, councils are going bust, those are facts.
“Has your budget really come even close to meeting the scale of the challenges this country faces?”
Mr Hunt said he believes it has, and blasted Mr Rajan’s characterisation of the British economy as “unworthy of the BBC”.
The Chancellor also slammed a joke made by the presenter that some are referring to him as the “fiscal drag queen of British politics”.
Mr Hunt fumed: “You accused me of being no different to a drag queen!”
A rattled Amol Rajan chuckled nervously at being called out by the top Tory, bizarrely claiming “there is no such thing as the BBC!”
Responding to this, Mr Hunt changed his charge and argued the biased claims were “unworthy of you, Amol”.
Begging to actually answer the question put to him, the Chancellor countered: “We have grown faster than the three largest European economies since 2010, the IMF say we are going to grow faster than those three large European economies in the next five years as well”.
“We have created 800 more jobs every single day that we’ve been in office; we’ve built the biggest technology industry in Europe – double the size of Germany’s – there is tremendous potential in the British economy”.
More to come…
