Wasted! How ‘Austerity Osborne’ is still squandering billions

When the Chancellor stands up to present his spending review next Wednesday it will be with the reputation of a crazed axeman. Much of the country, whether it thinks it a good thing or not, subscribes to the belief that George Osborne is shrinking the state year-on-year, slicing here, chopping there. In a recent poll 58 per cent of respondents agreed with the proposition that Osborne’s ‘austerity drive’ is ‘harming the economy’. Twenty per cent agreed that it was the ‘correct medicine’.

Yet it was a trick question based on a faulty premise: that there has been an austerity drive. The truth is that public spending has risen under this government — and in real terms, too. In 2009-10 public sector current expenditure, adjusted to 2011-12 prices, was £634.2 billion. By 2011-12 it was £645.7 billion and in 2012-13 it is projected to have been £647.1 billion. A more correct question for the pollsters to ask would be: do you think that George Osborne should stop flinging our money about, and actually begin the austerity drive that he keeps talking about?

Osborne is no mad axeman but a bodger blundering around with a blunt chisel.