Spending cuts were an economic mistake from the start

THE Chancellor says “austerity is finally coming to an end”. Well whoop-dee-doo. I am totally underwhelmed.

It shouldn’t have started in the first place and should have been scrapped years ago.

The Tories know not what they do. Austerity continues to hurt and kill people.

Announcing £400million for ‘little extras’ for schools and £1.7billion for universal credit work allowances isn’t going to do much to fix the pain and hurt from reckless failed austerity that had no basis in

economics. It was designed to shrink the state and make the poor poorer. It had no other purpose.

The Office for Budget Responsibility’s first forecast in June 2010 said the economy was going to boom due to public spending cuts. What planet were they on?

Austerity, the central plank of Tory economic dishonesty, delivered the slowest growth in three hundred years. In 2010 Osborne said austerity would let him balance the books by 2015. It didn’t happen.

Debt will still be rising in cash terms in 2023-4 with Hammond expecting to borrow £19.8billion that year.

Assuming Brexit goes well the OBR predicts pathetic GDP growth of about 1.5% a year for six years.

If, as is more likely, the PM delivers a job-killing EU exit, growth will be a lot worse, as will living standards.

Real wages since 2010 haven’t risen at all and show no signs of doing so. More fiddling while Rome burns.