Responses to the CSR

Mark Ferguson:

Today’s parliamentary “festivities” started with Ed Miliband trying to strangle the Comprehensive Spending Review at birth, by noting how many previous promises – especially on infrastructure – were complete nonsense that have never happened. It was incredibly effective – and produced Miliband’s best PMQs performance in months – but he needn’t have bothered. Osborne’s CSR was less about infrastructure – although there were some vague increases in spending, too little too late – and more about nasty, vicious, small politics.

The Chancellor rose in the Commons less hoarse than usual but with a bizarre pallid expression, worsened by the thick layer of white makeup that caked his face. He looked ridiculous, as if he’d dusted himself with icing sugar, But that was where any sense of mirth in this grim event came to an end. Early on he slashed pay for public sector workers – not just for a year or two, but each and every single year for all eternity. We need more doctors and teachers, nurses and care workers – Osborne has ensured today that all of those jobs are less appealing. Slow. Hand. Clap.

But this wasn’t a serious attempt at economics. Perish the thought. These people being made worse off and losing their jobs was brought you by a party political broadcast on behalf of the oops we forgot about the growth Tory Party.

Why else would a speech on the economy make a tenuous link between Waterloo and the last Labour government? That’s right, Osborne compared Labour to Napoleon, who was responsible for millions of deaths and, in Osborne’s terms, “impoverished millions”. Which, of course, is why food bank use has skyrocketed under this government, not the last one. And it’ll skyrocket further thanks to Osborne’s latest wheeze to fiddle the books off the backs of the poor – who will have to wait a week longer to claim benefits. Hungry? Poor? Unemployed? Can’t feed your kids? Wait another week, peasant – the Tories need to throw more money at a tax cut for the richest 1%.

But it’s fine, because we can all marvel at hilarious jokes about how fatty Eric Pickles is an example of lean government, as people starve and are driven to charity by this heartless, vindictive and mean little man. Ed Balls, in response,was excellent – far better than last autumn – lambasting and lampooning the Chancellor. And I’d love to write about how good that felt, watching him whomp this ignorant fool about the chamber.

But if I did I’d be lying. Because I couldn’t stop thinking about those people. And that hunger. And those lost jobs. And those presentless Christmases. And those queues growing outside payday lenders and food banks. And I just felt fucking sick.

Mark Ferguson is editor of LabourList

Sonia Sodha:

Today’s spending round is clever political positioning by Osborne: in setting out spending plans for the year following the general election, he is shifting the debate away from the here and now to what the next government would do. All parties are committed to fiscal consolidation in the medium term. So whatever the makeup of a new government, if it wishes to deviate from these plans it will need to set out how it will reallocate cuts or replace them by increasing taxes or public borrowing.

Miliband and Balls have therefore shifted the debate in recent weeks away from the pace of deficit reduction to how Labour would cut. Labour must stress three big flaws in the way Osborne is making cuts in its response going forwards.

First, the government is taking some politically expedient but deeply unfair decisions that are bad for the country. So it is ringfencing universal pensioner benefits, some of which are paid to older people with incomes far in excess of average earnings, whilst cutting in-work benefits such as childcare support and support for young people such as the Future Jobs Fund and the Educational Maintenance Allowance.

Second, Osborne is taking a short-term view, pursuing cuts that may make short-term savings but which risk creating big long-term costs for the state. Cutting the Future Jobs Fund, early years services and social care all create long-term financial burdens for the state. Even policies the government forecasts will save money in the long-term, such as £9,000 tuition fees, may end up costing more than the old system because the government’s assumptions are far too optimistic.

Third, if any business was looking to take a fifth of its cost base out over an eight year period, it would have its best and brightest minds on the challenging task at hand, and would not be distracting them with other projects. Yet instead of using cuts as an opportunity to performance-manage out the poorest performers, many of the best staff have taken voluntary redundancy and left across the public sector.  The government’s big reorganisations in health and education are distracting health and school leaders from how to do things more efficiently when cuts to other services are loading extras onto the NHS and schools, and away from their core mission of improving outcomes.

Sonia Sodha, former adviser to Ed Miliband writing in a personal capacity.

Hopi Sen: