Same old, same old

From The FT:

George Osborne, the chancellor, responding to Mr Miliband’s claims [that VAT was "the wong tax at the wrong time"] said: “Labour left Britain with record debts that people know we have to deal with to avoid an economic crisis... The question Ed Miliband faces is this: if you’re not raising VAT, where are the extra £13bn of spending cuts coming from? The NHS? Schools?”

Isn't this the same stupid game that Labour played for thirteen years - they simply had to increase taxes all the time to make up for "decades of under-investment under the Tories", and any Tory suggestion that taxes be reduced a bit was batted back with accusations that they wanted to reduce spending on schools and hospitals? Only now it's a Tory justifying a tax increase with the logic that the alternative is a reduction in spending on schools and hospitals.

And if Ed Miliband weren't who he is, he could have rattled off a long list of ways in which the UK government could easily save £13 billion a year (payments to EU budget, overseas aid, Green tomfoolery, cut private sector procurement by 5% etc) or he could have pointed out that only half the NHS budget is actually spent in hospitals and only half the education budget is spent in schools (heck knows where the rest of it goes). But he is who he is, and don't the Tories just know it!