Ed Miliband to tell anti-cuts march: hard choices for whoever is in power

Labour leader expected to say Tories creating sink-or-swim society but borrowing means some cuts will still have to be made
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Miliband in Bedford
Ed Miliband is likely to anger some trade unionts with his sometimes tough message to the TUC anti-cuts march and rally in London. Photograph: Chris Radburn/PA

Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, will tell Saturday's TUC anti-cuts march and rally the Conservatives are creating a sink-or-swim society, but will admit that whoever was in power would have to make some cuts.

Miliband has been attacked by the Tories for attending the march, described as "a future that works event" in a Labour press release.

In a sometimes tough message, likely to anger some trade unionists, he is expected to tell the march there will still be hard choices.

"With borrowing rising not falling today, I have said that whoever was in government now would have to make some cuts," he will say. "I do not promise easy times. But I do promise a different and fairer approach.

"This government has shown us self-defeating austerity, by cutting too far and too fast, is not the answer.


"You don't build a successful country with sink or swim. You do it by building one nation." He will argue the march is not just a trade union event who have been failed by the government's austerity measures.

He will say: "People have come here from all walks of life, from all parts of our country.

"Young people looking for work, construction workers, nurses worried about the NHS and off-duty police officers worried about cuts to frontline services. People from every corner of Britain.

"So many people have the will to work, the ambition to work, but cannot find a job. "They do not think that Britain owes them a living. They are not asking for the earth. They just have a simple request. They want a future that works for them.

"And what did the government say? They told us austerity would help our economy grow. But our economy has not grown. It has flatlined.

"They told us 'we're all in this together'. But now they are cutting taxes for millionaires, as they raise taxes on everybody else, including our pensioners.

"They told us the gain would be worth the pain. But even after the cuts, the pain, the tax rises, borrowing is not falling — it's rising. They are even failing the one test they set themselves."

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