Michael Gove said there would be no emergency budget this summer – insisting the issue was not “not a big deal”, despite the growing cost of living crisis.
In a bizarre interview with the BBC, the cabinet minister used a Liverpool accent to ask people to “calm down” due to the lack of additional financial support before the autumn budget.
This is due to confusion over Boris Johnson’s promise that more aid will be revealed in the coming days before the Treasury Department rules out additional short-term financial measures.
“The prime minister has emphasized that we are constantly looking for ideas to alleviate the pressure on people facing incredibly difficult times – but this is not an urgent budget,” Mr Gove told BBC Breakfast.
The minister added: “This is an example of some commentators trying to make a statement that is common sense, turning it into – capital letters – big news when the Ministry of Finance is quite right in saying, ‘Calm down.’
Mr Gove said Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davy had confused the media vortex by saying that the emergency budget problem was not “a big deal” and that people should “understand it proportionately”.
The senior Tories said the Liberal Democrat leader had “no scuba diving”.
The rising minister also said Labor and the Liberal Democrats did not have “great ideas” to tackle the cost of living crisis – although they rejected their call for an unforeseen tax on oil and gas companies’ profits.
Labor deputy Angela Raynor responded to Mr Gove’s interview with the BBC by tweeting: “Is the cost of living crisis just a joke for them? This is not a serious government. We need an urgent budget right now. “
Lisa Nandi, a Labor leader, said Mr Gove was joking and using stupid voices as families across the country struggled to survive. This is not a game … Take it seriously. Do your job.
Mr Johnson’s government has been accused of abandoning British families to living in poverty after the Queen’s speech did not include new measures to tackle the cost of living crisis.
Labor said it was a “thin” legislative agenda without big ideas, while a leading think tank described the package as “cosmetic surgery for an economy facing a heart attack”.
Senior ministers, including Prime Minister and Chancellor Rishi Sunak, are praising proposals from cabinet colleagues for money-saving measures that can be achieved at no cost to the government.
Mr Gove said the cabinet minister had discussed the measures at no cost on Tuesday night, but did not reveal what they were. He said the government would “talk more and do more” to help people in crisis with the cost of living.
“But this is not an emergency budget,” he told Sky News. “Political initiatives will be announced by individual departments in a timely manner.”
Mr Gove has a history of conflicting remarks. In 2001, he wrote an article claiming that British men had been the target of a “collective cuckold” and needed to learn to accept male chauvinism.
The Independent revealed last year that Mr Gove made harsh sexual comments, joked about pedophilia at senior levels of government and used racist insults during his student days.
The minister described Prince Charles as “dumb, wet, an adulterer” in speeches at the Cambridge Union while he was a student at Oxford, and after graduation while working as a journalist.
In an obvious attempt at humor, Mr Gove also called people living in British-colonized countries “blurred wuzzies” and made a series of sexual jokes at the expense of Tory Minister Lucy Fraser.
Add Comment