George Osborne’s nightmare vision for Britain

It’s always the small print that matters.

At first glance, Osborne’s Autumn Statement looked like one of his usual wheezes. Freezing benefits (again), screwing over public sector workers (again) and making a relatively sensible Stamp Duty change in a way that was in all but name a bonanza tax cut for those lucky enough to be on the housing ladder.The small print is that George Osborne still has to make 60% of his planned spending cuts in the next parliament. Effectively that means crashing the car of public spending off the cliff edge of reality. It’s very hard to see how anyone of sound mind could plan slashing the British state back to 35% of GDP (down from nearly 50% not so long ago) in just five years. The social impact of such a shrinking of the British state – which has been Osborne’s real plan the whole time – would be utterly brutal. It’d make the past five years and the Thatcher years look like a cakewalk.It’d mean cutting spending to 1930s levels. Osborne may consider that hyperbolic (and he has every right to whinge about the BBC’s coverage of his cockamamie plans if he so wishes) but it’s empirically and terrifyingly true. Some on the right cry that austerity is over, but my friends it has barely begun.

Ed Balls has – thankfully – ruled out Labour chasing Osborne down this impossibilist rabbit hole of ever worsening austerity. But he will need to either be honest and articulate far more clearly how bad things might get under Labour, or choose to tackle head on the kind of state that Osborne plans on creating and spell out a more optimistic, bolder and less austerity driven vision for the nation.

What Osborne is planning doesn’t bear thinking about. But we should be straightforward about what public spending of only 35% GDP would mean.

So what would that look like?

Well that depends on whether Osborne continues to “protect” areas of spending like the NHS and schools. If so, we may rapid avoid a worsening of conditions in the health service – although wait times are up and A&Es are under pressure before Osborne has wielded has axe on the NHS – but we’ll face catastrophic cuts elsewhere. And whilst we may avoid a return to buckets on the floors of classrooms to catch rainwater (a fact of life when I was at primary school), who will teach our children when teaching pays worse each year in real terms than the last?

And what of those departments that aren’t protected? What on earth will be left of them after government spending on those areas is slashed by around two-thirds?

Imagine a police force without the numbers, the equipment or the resources to adequately catch or deter criminals. Or imagine an outsourced police service where multinationals not the state are in charge of law and order.

Imagine a courts system (already suffering from brutal legal aid cuts) stripped to the bare bones, unable to provide the basic standards of justice we expect from our government.

Imagine universities shorn of state support, effectively privatised and charging ever higher fees to the children of a global elite, excluding many of the best British students because they simply can’t afford to compete in the marketplace for places.

Imagine a relaxing of environmental controls, a movement away from limited action on renewable energy and climate change, and an abandonment of any semblance of fightback against global warming, because it’s too expensive and too many Tories don’t believe in the facts of climate science anyway.

Imagine local government – already facing being stripped back to the bare bones, already facing a restriction on democracy because there’s little money to do more than what is required by law – forced to cut not just to the bone, but into the bone, slashing at child protection budgets, social care spending and yes, bin collections.

Imagine a transport network gives off to the public sector, but no longer propped up by state spending, meaning even higher prices on trains and private sector toll roads in and between Britain’s cities.

Imagine a welfare state. In fact, don’t imagine a welfare state at all – because the levels of public spending Osborne has planned were last seen in the days when the welfare state was just a pipe dream. So imagine in work benefits eliminated and out of work benefits cut to levels on which it is utterly impossible to live with any level of dignity (we may well be there already, in many cases). Even pensioners – who normally escape the worst of cuts – may not be safe from the public spending squeeze.

Imagine defence spending cut so far that “defending our borders” isn’t a right-wing slogan about immigration, but something which we may not even be able to do.

Imagine a Britain where the rubbish piles high on the privatised streets, where getting to work costs more and pays less, where our international standing is diminished and our society crumbles, where poverty both in work and out of work is not just ride but growing rapidly and where the state exists to provide only the most basic of support (and even then, not always so well). This is what George Osborne wants Britain to become.

This is, in short, why even at this difficult time for the Labour Party, we can’t let this lot win again.