Just what is the essential difference between our two main political parties? Certainly not their respective attitudes towards fiscal prudence; the thing which used to provide clear blue water between the two. Now we have two parties which don’t give a damn about public debt, who think that they can spend willy-nilly and that something, somehow will come round and save them in the end.
No, the message of today’s spending review is that the Conservatives and Labour are entrenching their respective positions as the representatives of two tribes: private sector workers and public sector ones.
We all know there’s bad news on the horizon in the shape of tax rises and, inevitably at some point, spending cuts. But why make such a show of announcing that public sector pay will be frozen next year with the exception of doctors, nurses and anyone earning under £24,000 a year?
And why up the stakes by saying that while public sector workers have seen their pay rise by four per cent this year, private sector staff have seen it fall by one per cent?
It is tempting to believe that this was a deliberate political pitch by Sunak to put himself on the side of private sector workers, who may feel aggrieved at the way their public sector counterparts have been allowed to ride through the Covid crisis with secure salaries and pensions, while they themselves have suffered unemployment, uncertainty and collapsing pension funds.
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