Party Lines: October 22nd

By Mark Ferguson / @markfergusonuk

As the row over the Comprehensive Spending Review rumbled on, Ed Miliband said that Nick Clegg’s complaints over the IFS report would “convince nobody”:

“Instead of trashing the Institute of Fiscal Studies, the Deputy Prime Minister should be owning up to the truth. This was a spending review driven by ideology, hitting lower and middle income families the hardest. We have consistently warned about the consequences of cutting too far and too fast. The unedifying spectacle of Mr Clegg rubbishing the IFS will convince nobody of the government’s case.”

Ed Balls responded to the news that all Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs) in Lancashire have been told their jobs might be disestablished on March 31st 2011 following funding cuts announced in the spending review:

Speaking to the Guardian, Peter Hain said that Labour’s policy making processes had created cyncism:

And after Iain Duncan Smith told the unemployed to “get on a bus” and look for work, it hasn’t taken long for the comparison to be made between IDS and Thatcher era minister Norman Tebbit, who famously told the unemployed to get on their bikes. Speaking this afternoon, shadow work and pensions minister Douglas Alexander said:

“Iain Duncan Smith still doesn’t seem to understand that to move people from welfare into work requires there to be work available.”

“The Conservatives are cutting jobs, cutting help for childcare, cutting working tax credit that makes work pay and even cutting support for buses.”

“Like Norman Tebbit before him, Iain Duncan Smith seems sadly to have retreated into the Conservative comfort zone of blame and disdain.”