CHANCELLOR George Osborne is to throw everyone in Coventry out of work after a brilliant suggestion from Harriet Harman.

Mr Osborne had spent an hour setting out a hard-hitting budget but then immediately withdrew it after Ms Harman said it would have the same impact as taking the axe to the West Midlands hellhole.

The chancellor said: “That is just a stunningly good idea. Does anyone really object? I mean really? And don’t just disagree for the sake of it. Let’s think about this for a minute.”

Holding aloft a copy of the Budget, he added: “This is horribly complicated. Tax rates, allowances, thresholds, family credits and stuff. It takes ages to read and, I’ll be perfectly honest with you, I don’t really understand any of it.

“Sacking Coventry is fair, simple and should only take me about 20 minutes.

“Now some will no doubt say ‘what about all the people in Coventry? What are they supposed to do?’. But I don’t care about them and neither does anyone else.

“We can protect welfare support for the rest of the country and make sure that middle class families continue to receive the annual increases in child benefit that they need to buy really good chorizo.

“Mr Deputy Speaker – Coventry. FUCKED. I commend it to the House.”

A Treasury spokesman said the imminent de-Coventrisation of the UK replicated the key aims of the Budget perfectly by targeting around 300,000 indolent scroungers with ghastly regional accents.

He added: “We will however be pressing ahead with the VAT increase, but to those on low incomes who are concerned we would simply say, why not spend the money on fresh fruit and vegetables for a change instead of yet another enormous television that you can’t afford anyway and will only make you even more fat and stupid, as if that was actually possible?

“Don’t poor people make you sick?”