Labour: Tory cuts are extreme

Ed Miliband, leader of Britain’s opposition Labour party, yesterday sought to rally support for his economic policy, five months before an election, by portraying his rivals’ planned spending cuts as “extreme” and driven by a heartless ideology.

Although neck-and-neck in opinion polls with Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservatives, Labour’s economic competence rating is sharply lower, with rivals often telling voters the party mishandled the 2008 financial crisis and left behind the biggest peacetime deficit since the Second World War.

If Labour won power again, it would borrow and spend and rack up more debts, they say.