An important day for our media

Amid all the media furore about Ed Miliband’s Lindsay Lohan moment last Tuesday, I observed to one journalist pal that his colleagues’ renewed focus on the deficit was a double-edged sword for George Osborne, especially after Ed Balls’ vow the previous day that Labour would make no tax or spending pledges funded from additional borrowing.

I said: “Osborne can hardly come out in his conference speech now or his pre-election Budget and say: ‘Here’s a big tax cut, but don’t worry where the money’s coming from, we’ll find it somewhere’. After this week, the media can’t let him get away with that, or they’ll look like hypocrites.”

I may have spoken too soon. I haven’t seen all the coverage of Osborne’s £150 million tax cut for individuals with pension pots invested in shares, but – as far as I can tell – only the Daily Mail has even asked the question: ‘How is this going to be paid for?’, receiving the laughable answer that we will have to wait until the Autumn Statement to be told.

If Labour had last week made a pledge on tax or spending and been unable to say right away where the money was coming from to pay for it, that failure – on top of Ed Miliband’s forgetfulness – would rightly have seen them slaughtered by the media for a lack of seriousness about getting the deficit down.

On that basis, George Osborne simply cannot be allowed to get away with doing the same thing, especially if tomorrow’s pensions measure is just the first in a series of similarly unfunded announcements in his or Cameron’s speeches this week, or in the Autumn Statement and Budget to come.

This is especially important because we are now in the territory of tax revenue permanently foregone. When poor Chloe Smith struggled to explain where the money would be found simply to defer a fuel duty increase for six months back in 2012, it was at least plausible that some departmental under-spends could plug the temporary hole in tax revenues, thereby not requiring any more borrowing.

But tomorrow’s £150 million tax cut is not a temporary measure; it either requires the Treasury to raise another tax, to permanently cut an area of spending, or to fund the measure through increased borrowing. The same will be true of any other substantial and permanent tax or spending measure we hear about this week or over the coming months.

If George Osborne is able to get away tomorrow without explaining in detail which of those options it will be, and how – if it is the latter – that squares with his commitments on the deficit, then the British media will be seriously failing in their duties. They must hold Osborne to the same standards they held Labour to last week.