So, austerity is to end. Or that is what the briefings for Wednesday’s Autumn Statement seem to indicate: Philip Hammond will loosen the purse strings, relax his fiscal targets and give the economy a big public spending-induced buzz – if indeed buzz is quite the right word for what happens when governments spend money.
There is just one problem with what Hammond appears to be proposing. No, not that it almost certainly won’t be enough to please Ed Balls, Yanis Varoufakis, the unions, the Guardian and everyone else on the left who accused George Osborne of trashing the economy by making ‘cuts’ – or, more accurately, by refusing to grow public spending in line with what they think it ought to grow by.
No, the problem is that Philip Hammond would appear to be breaking the law if he does not set out a plan for the government to run
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