LONDON: Britain’s opposition Labour Party will partly back the government’s goal of achieving a budget surplus within five years but will oppose cuts that hurt investment, the poor or average earners, the party’s finance spokesman said on Saturday.

Jeremy Corbyn, a veteran of Labour Party’s left, won party’s leadership this month on an anti-austerity platform, and had said Britain did not need to follow Conservative Finance Minister George Osborne’s timetable for deficit reduction.

But Corbyn’s ally and Finance Spokesman John McDonnell said he would back government’s ‘charter’ setting out medium-term budget goals.