Sometimes, a phrase cuts through the noise. Last year, the independent Office for Budget Responsibility declared that state spending in the UK would fall to the lowest level in 80 years.
The phrase was quickly honed into a weapon by Labour in the days after chancellor of the exchequer George Osborne’s autumn statement. Left in power after the May elections, the Tories would take Britain “back to the 1930s”, Labour warned.
This rattled the Conservatives, who feared the voters’ response if they were convinced that electing David Cameron for another five years would bring nothing but hardship.
Such a backdrop explains much about yesterday’s final budget speech from Osborne, filled as it was with references to “the future”, to Britain being the “comeback country”.
Substance
Much of it is guff, of course, but an election has to be fought within weeks. However, there is substance, too: 1.9 million more people are working than were doing so five years ago; 30.9 million are now employed, the highest number ever. Wages are rising in real terms, too.
However, it has not fed through into public opinion, which explains why Osborne stressed that “the squeeze” on public spending will end a year earlier than planned.
Keen to fend off well-founded charges that he is doctrinal about spending cuts, Osborne insisted that spending thereafter would rise in line with national economic growth.
“We can do that while still running a healthy surplus to bear down on our debt: a state neither smaller than we need, nor bigger than we can afford,” he declared.
With 50 days to polling, language sometimes loses its meaning. Instead of talking about the deficit – which he said he would halve, but has not done so – Osborne now talks about “national debt share”.
Spending spree
Total debt has doubled during his time in office, despite spending cuts. Now, he has indulged in a spending spree to target key voters: pensioners, for example, were offered 4 per cent interest for billions of their savings.
He has targeted first-time buyers, offering them a savings scheme that will evoke memories in Ireland of Charlie McCreevy’s SSIAs a decade ago.
Meanwhile, Osborne sought to counter the charge that the Conservatives think only about the southeast: “”Where is employment growing fastest? The northwest. Where is a job being created every 10 minutes? The midlands. And which county has created more jobs than the whole of France? The great county of Yorkshire,” he declared, to Conservative MPs’ cheers.
Osborne is described as the great strategist within the Conservatives. Sometimes, his actions amount to tactics, rather than strategy. And sometimes – like the “omnishambles” budget of 2012 – they backfire. If re-elected, he plans the sharpest spending cuts yet seen in the second and third year of the next parliament. However, he has sought to hide much of the actions to come in optimistic rhetoric. Such messages resonate with that section of voters who have never forgiven Labour for the 2008 economic crash.
Labour’s Ed Miliband targeted those who do not accept Osborne’s views: “It was a budget people won’t believe. George Osborne just spent an hour telling people they’re better off when they know they’re worse off.”
