Don’t mention the cuts

This year’s budget showed the two faces of George Osborne. Within three months he’s come up with two different sets of figures for public spending plans over the next five years.

 
The autumn statement in December showed a true Tory Chancellor wanting to force through colossal cuts. It was a bleak future of near-permanent austerity with the loss of another 1m public sector jobs.

 
The budget Chancellor, now only 12 days away from the start of the general election, tried to put on a different election gloss. But not a very convincing one.

 
His political GPS has steered him away from taking us down the Road to Wigan pier – taking us back to pre-welfare state spending levels. But the new final destination and the road leading to it are also very bleak.

 
The cuts remain unprecedented. It’s scorched earth public services with massive cuts to come across the public sector, even in the so-called ring-fenced areas. The cuts remain colossal, even worse over the next three years than planned last December. They are so bad that Osborne did not mention them.

 
Not a single word about the NHS or any other public service. The silence was deafening but the message clear: more cuts at a level not seen before.

 
Osborne packaged this as one more “big step” on the road from austerity to prosperity. For public services it’s a step over the edge and into the void. His version of what is happening to working people will not go down well in the real world. They have suffered a dramatic drop in the spending power of the money they earn. Jobs remain precarious. Many of those created have been low paid, zero hours or fake self-employed.

 
Road to nowhere

 
It’s so bad even Cameron has pleaded for bosses to give pay rises. Except when he’s in charge and your public sector pay rise is frozen or limited. The Road to Wigan Pier has become the road to nowhere in particular beyond more pain with no gain.

 
The budget had nothing on house building to address the growing housing crisis. But subsidies for house buying with a new house deposit savings scheme which will cost at least £800m a year. And the new “pension’s freedoms” appear to be a wheeze to secure over £500 million a year in new tax when people cash in annuities.

 
There was the part reversal of taxes on North Sea oil production hit by falling oil prices. And some increases in individual tax thresholds, but not yet. A penny off a pint, cuts in taxes on cider and spirits. A freeze on fuel duty. Some more taxes on banks, offset against tax cuts for them in the form of yet another cut in corporation tax to 20 per cent.

 
Spin-driven

 
Despite promising no gimmicks or giveaways, Osborne could not resist. They were just not very good gimmicks, but what there were driven by spin. It was a list of bits and pieces aimed at the Tory-backing media. Penny off a pint and freeze on fuel duty? Cheers George says the Sun headline.

 
Money for homebuyers, that’s for the Telegraph and the Mail. And bits and pieces of spending (not much) ticked off the main regional media centres from the south west up to Wales and Scotland.

 
It was a flat and smug budget. It did not impress Unite. Len McCluskey Unite general secretary said in reaction. “George Osborne’s smugness today is utterly out of place for someone who missed every target he set himself.

 
“He cannot hide the long term economic pain he caused to the decent people of this country with his senseless austerity, run away from the living standards that he levelled back to 2007, or hide from the record levels of personal debt swamping the people of this country.

 
“People simply aren’t feeling the economic growth. And the sun which the chancellor says is beginning to shine is clouded by insecurity and low wages for millions of families. Behind the short-term sweeteners and budget bluster, the reality for millions is that their wages won’t last the month. Millions more are trapped in ghost jobs with pay so pathetic they need benefits to make ends meet.

 
“Osborne’s is not an economy where the gains are shared fairly, and people know this all too well. Take away today’s gimmicks and this budget is a window onto five more years of Tory rule – more savage cuts to essential public services and the deepening spread of inequality.

 
“If you’re a hedge fund, wealthy retiree, or a business shy of providing fairly paid, secure employment, Osborne’s Britain is the place for you. If you’re looking for decent job, a home in which to raise your kids or a safe NHS, then it is not.”

 
Unite assistant general secretary Steve Turner was also scathing. He said, “There was nothing to boost wages, nothing to tackle the crisis in social housing, nothing to address growing workplace insecurity and nothing to stem growing personal debt or the collapse of public services. A budget without hope, a failed opportunity by a failed government.

 
“While the poorest gain little from the explosion in precarious work or reliance on foodbanks, corporate Britain remains free to avoid tax while subsidising low pay and propping up profits via ‘corporate welfare’ handouts that keep millions in misery.

 
“With 60 per cent of the cuts still to come, the only promise the Tory’s will keep is one of more ideological austerity, a continued growth in insecure, precarious work, of cuts in living standards and continued attacks on the most vulnerable alongside the services that support them.”