The ringfence cycle

By now, George Osborne had hoped to have completed his austerity programme. Instead, he finds himself making what is, still, the most ambitious round of cuts of any finance minister in the developed world. The Chancellor is paying the price for the leisurely pace that he decided to take in the last parliament – due to his habit of buying time by deferring pain.

The Chancellor still doesn’t seem to be in too much of a rush. In his spending review statement this week, he decided to spend some £83 billion more over the parliament than he said he would at the general election.  Foreign aid is not just protected, but will increase by some £3 billion – more than the budget for the Home Office. The science budget, Tony Blair’s great plaything, will increase to £4.7 billion. The NHS budget, the biggest of any government department in the world, will rise by a further 20 per cent.