Cameron previews the austerity budget

Tick, tock, tick, tock: only three-and-a-bit days to go until George Osborne’s long-anticipated austerity Budget, and the coalition is gearing up its efforts to prepare us for the worst. Exhibit A is David Cameron’s interview in the Times this morning, which contains few pleasantries and a whole heap of stern talk – particularly for those in the public sector. As the PM puts it:

“There is no way of dealing with an 11 per cent budget deficit just by hitting either the rich of the welfare scrounger … there are three large items of spending that you can’t ignore and those are public sector pay, public sector pensions and benefits.”

After that, the rhetoric mirrors George Osborne’s speech to the last party conference (which was seen, at the time, as the straight-talking flipside to Cameron’s sunnier speech). And so we’re told that it will be necessary to deal with this spending to “protect jobs,” and to ensure that we have “great schools and hospitals and police on the streets.