In the end, George Osborne didn’t flinch. The Chancellor is a clever political operator
– too clever, sometimes – but the result is a cuts package that has surprisingly broad popular support. And this has been achieved, in part, by including measures that strike the likes
of me as economically unwise. So much of this budget was known in advance that we didn’t find out much new today. The below points are my thoughts not on the overall package – which I
strongly support – but the pieces of it that we learned today:
1) Total state spending is falling by 3.3 percent in real terms over the next four years, at a lower level than the 3.7 percent forecast in the Budget. Welfare is falling to soften departmental cuts to the extent that even the IFS now say that Osborne’s cuts are the deepest since April 1976 – not since the war.
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