Tories pledge to cut deficit and taxes

Vote Tory to get the deficit down and taxes too! That’s the subliminal message from George Osborne at the press conference I’m sitting in.

Ken Clarke’s microphone wires were dangling like dropped braces as he spoke. There is a worry for the Tories that their credibility might be hanging out a bit right now too.

In the past David Cameron has ridiculed the idea that you go to the electorate on the basis of promising stuff that’ll come from efficiency savings not yet made. But here he is doing just that.

The Tories said in the past that they couldn’t identify a lot of cuts until they were in office because you can’t know the cost of cancelling various contracts.

George Osborne just repeated that. But he is nonetheless claiming he can make £6bn cuts in areas like this on top of the £11bn in savings the government said it was chasing in the budget last week (there’s “not a great deal of overlap” George Osborne just said).