Member-only story
Austerity Redux: Return of the Cuts
On 17th November, the UK’s Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt announced some long-expected bad news for the country. In order to fill a supposed £50 billion hole in the government’s finances, Hunt pledged a raft of tax rises and spending cuts. While the Chancellor promised that health and education spending would be protected and that benefits would rise to match inflation, nearly £30 billion worth of cuts will mean vital services such as local government will be even more underfunded in the future whilst public sector wages will be suppressed for years to come. At the same time, tax rises will push millions of workers into higher brackets meaning that real incomes will decline. Austerity looms for the British middle and working classes.
The one saving grace is that most of the spending cuts will not start to come into effect until 2024. The Conservative government are hoping that by then the economy will be recovering and that inflation will be well down from its current high level. This delay, and the fact that the cuts did not go as far as many had feared, was certainly seen as a stay of execution. Spending cuts of £30 billion are undoubtedly significant but the amount is one that pales in comparison with the type of cuts witnessed during the Conservative/Liberal Democrats coalition of 2010 to 2015.
