Osborne: Labour and Ukip policies ‘anti-business’

Chancellor of the exchequer George Osborne accused the Labour Party and Ukip of seeking to isolate Britain and risking its recovery.

Speaking the day before European elections expected to show his Conservatives lingering in third place behind Ed Miliband’s Labour and Nigel Farage’s Ukip, he told business leaders support for the left and populist right threatens to damage Britain’s standing as a free-trading, free market economy for the first time in 25 years.

“Political parties on the left and the populist right have this in common: They want to pull up the drawbridge and shut Britain off from the world,” Osborne told the Confederation of British Industry.