Jeremy Corbyn left red-faced after mixing up his economic bodies at PMQs
Jeremy Corbyn has been mocked in the House of Commons after the Labour leader after mixing up two very different economic bodies at Prime Minister's Questions.
Corbyn had been seeking to needle the Theresa May over lowered economic forecasts at the time of last week's Autumn Statement, but it all went wrong when May noted that the IMF [International Monetary Fund] has said the UK will be world's fastest growing advanced economy.
“Since she quotes the Institute of Fiscal Studies, I think she's being a little bit selective, because they also went on to say that the prospect for workers over the next six years was, and I quote, 'dreadful', and went on to say, creating, and I quote, 'the worst decade for living standards since the last war, and probably since the 1920s.”
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Corbyn's slip was pounced on by May, much to the joy of Conservative backbenchers.
“Given that he can't differentiate between the IMF and the IFS, it's probably a good job that he's sitting there and I'm standing here,” May said.
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It came as part of a session in which Tory backbencher Peter Lilley called on the Prime Minister to condemn European officials for their refusal to discuss the rights of UK and EU nationals living abroad after Brexit.
“The reaction that we have seen shows why it was absolutely right for us not to do what the Labour party wanted us to do, which was simply to give away the guarantee for the rights of EU citizens here in the UK because as we have seen that would leave UK citizens high and dry,” May said.