Hidebound by ideology

George Orwell once noted, “Political language… is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

It perfectly sums up George Osborne’s approach to budgets and autumn statements.

So we can expect a cold ‘Hurricane Osborne ‘of cuts howling through public services – but pitched by the Chancellor to suggest it’s only a mild economic wind blowing our economy forward and providing security and warmth.

This is the man who seems to think an economic miracle is going on. And that the economic sun is shining as we prepare to reap the harvest he is sowing.

History was Osborne’s subject at Oxford. And the parallels between Osborne and US President Herbert Hoover are becoming uncanny.

It’s possible that Osborne has studied Hoover, the Wall Street Crash and the great depression. It’s not just the shared ideology and the lack of personality, but the shared – or stolen – political language that suggests it.

Hoover is blamed as the president who failed to respond to the challenges of the Wall Street Crash and the recession surrounding it. Hidebound by an ideology which insisted that government should not intervene to stimulate growth, the recession became depression.

Cut ‘n’ paste

Hoover was obsessed with ‘balancing the books’. And doing that mostly by cuts and not raising taxes. Which sounds very like an Osborne ‘cut ‘n’ paste’.

Hoover was adamant that government action of any kind could not address the 1930s depression or boost industry. Osborne and business secretary Sajid Javid are of like mind in not wanting an industrial strategy – another cut ‘n’ paste.

Hoover insisted the government had no role in the economy and should keep ‘out of business’ at any price. Cut ‘n’ paste Osborne who is having a firesale of state assets at a knock down price.

Hoover believed you cut your way to prosperity. And yes, that’s in Osborne’s political shopping basket as well.

Hoover’s delusional approach is also cut ‘n’ pasted by Osborne. Hoover claimed he was on the verge of wiping out poverty in the US.

Hoover actually oversaw millions being made destitute with the jobless and homeless living in shanty towns known as ‘Hoovervilles’.

Osborne has overseen growing poverty. Re-defining it is another Hooverism – in Hoover’s US, if you were not malnourished, you were not in poverty.

And we can expect even more of the ham-fisted Hoover ideology and economics in tomorrow’s (November 25) Autumn Statement as well.

Hoover himself noted that he had an entire depression named after him. With George it might be the Osborne recession he inflicted on us which choked off growth and pushed up the budget deficit.

Hoover lived in his own comfort bubble, believing prosperity was on the horizon. He never actually broke into a rendition of ‘The sun will come out tomorrow’ but you get the picture.

Ideologically deluded

In this ideologically deluded world Osborne wants to reduce government borrowing by pursuing policies which choke off real economic growth and push borrowing up. It’s why he can’t hit a target.

The result – as we have found out again and again – is that tax receipts (what we pay to government) are too low to keep up with public spending, forcing up borrowing. There have now been three months of that in a row.

Osborne responds – like Hoover – by getting agitated about the growing debts being placed on future generations.

And what does he do? Charges students even more for student loans saddling them with debts at big interest rates. Then offers subsidies for those wanting to take on big mortgage debts.

That is not reducing debt for the younger generation.

‘Economic miracle’? 

Tory claims of an economic miracle include saying that of pay rising sharply – up by more than 3 per cent. But we learn this week from official statistics that those rises have been over-stated and no more than 1.8 per cent and falling.

And for working people, the value of wages are still – says the Resolution Foundation – 10 per cent below where they were before the banking crash.

A measure of our economic health is the weak pulse of inflation. Depending on what measure of inflation you use it been either hovering around 0 per cent or around 1 per cent for longer than a cocky Bank of England and Treasury thought it would.

That does not suggest any strong economic recovery.

What little economic growth we have is being pushed along by consumer credit (that will end in tears) and population growth. It’s simple – the more people you have, the more they produce, the more they consume.

That is not an economic miracle.

The forward march of Osborne’s ‘makers’ – another boast – never actually started. Redcar’s highly skilled, higher paid steelworkers could well be picking up jobs in Subway it has emerged. It’s now become the march of the sandwich makers.

The trend with steel, tyre making and top end engineering like Rolls Royce and BAE is for highly skilled, higher paid secure jobs to be marching out the door while minimum wage jobs march into the UK.

And the great export drive? We hit the depths of the worst balance of payments figures since shortly after the battle of Waterloo with no sign of that getting much better.

It means foreign made goods are coming in faster than we can sell ours abroad.

Osborne talks of devolution while centralising decisions about public infrastructure investment with the creation of the National Infrastructure Commission. That really is pulling the plug on any thought of devolved public investment decisions.

If that were not enough, the latest TUC research shows that cuts to working tax credits will hit northern parts of the UK the hardest. Those ÂŁ12bn cuts, subject to Osborne spin, will do in around 10 per cent of the incomes of the lowest paid in some parts of the country.

Squeezing

Pulling that amount of money out of local economies hits the northern powerhouse and sends the population off in the direction of the northern poorhouse. And if he can’t cut tax credits as much as he’d like, Osborne will find a way of squeezing the money out of the poorest and most vulnerable.

So expect lots of smoke and mirrors. A few billion to the NHS to help it stave off near collapse, but dressed up as a boost to a full on seven day NHS. It’s nonsense on stilts but don’t expect a tame media to look too deeply.

But in reality these Osborne cuts are likely to be very deep and they will hurt public services and the most vulnerable.

The rhetoric and ideology will remain close to the claptrap turned out by President Hoover during the last major blow to the world economy in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The US public eventually caught on to Hoover’s delusion and even named a depression and shanty towns after him.

We now have a Chancellor following the ideology and thoughts of President Herbert Hoover, the man many blame for the destitution of the 1930s by his inability to act effectively.

And that’s what the Autumn Statement and Comprehensive Spending Review will in effect tell us: that George Osborne is the new Herbert Hoover.