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Only seven days after announcing an unfair tax hike on low and middle earners who are self-employed, thanks to Labour pressure Philip Hammond has been forced into an embarrassing U-turn.

Why did no one in the Tory government speak out?

The answer is they are out too out of touch to notice.

It took Labour pressure to drag them kicking and screaming on this issue.

Labour is bringing the fight to the Tories, and they don’t like it.

U-turns like this show Labour’s strong Opposition under Jeremy Corbyn, but also it exposes the disarray at the top of Government.

(Image: Rex)

On a day when the top Tory in charge of Brexit admitted that he had not considered what a Tory Hard Brexit, as the Prime Minister is proposing, would cost our economy, we now find there is a £2billion black hole in the Budget.

The Tories like to pretend they can be trusted with the public finances, but the truth is they have now delivered three Budgets without the sums adding up.

And despite this gaffe they are still set to borrow almost £2trillion pounds under their plans, with working people in our country still set to be £1,400 a year on average worse off by 2020.

But they can always find money for their friends in big business and a wealthy few.

For example, they are still going ahead with a £40million tax giveaway to tax dodgers on top of the £70billion they are set to handout to business and the super-rich.

At the same time today as the Prime Minister was deciding to U-turn on this £2billion tax hike, it was announced that the number of working people on zero-hour contracts has ballooned to nearly a million.

Still, this government is going ahead with a 25p cut to the National Living Wage.

(Image: PA)

It is this Tory rigged economy that will still see six million people earn less than the living wage and four million kids grow up in poverty.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

The next Labour government will be one for working people that keeps living costs down: with a £10-an-hour Real Living Wage, a cap on energy prices and the railways brought back into public hands.

And we will end the tax giveaways at the top, make the super-rich publish their taxes, and make the unfair boardroom sky-high pay a thing of the past.

Labour is blocking unfair Tory policies where we can, but we want a transformative government under Jeremy Corbyn to really build a country for working people.

John McDonnell MP is the Shadow Chancellor