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The spending review is the perfect storm in a teacup for our times
The Chancellor’s spending review is a serious storm in a teacup as dark clouds gather around the UK’s economy, editor Edmund Greaves writes.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves delivered her major spending review yesterday. Needless to say the reaction (and speculation beforehand) was a deeply mixed bag.
For all the talk of spending here, investment there and tough decisions there was little for normal people to take from the announcements – a veritable storm in the media teacup which frenzied itself up ahead of the day.
The reason it contained nothing of interest for us normals is that it wasn’t a ‘fiscal event’. The Chancellor – in other words – didn’t change any tax rates or give away any new baubles.
Even the experts seemed a bit baffled by the whole thing.
But it has landed at a time when the economic clouds are beginning to gather in earnest.
Numbers going the wrong way
Labour have been very quick to defend the economic picture, but it is undoubtedly gloomy.
In the past 12 months 250,000 people are no longer on employer payrolls (a proxy for unemployment figures that are broken at the moment).
Interest rates have come down a bit – but thanks to inflation ticking back up close to 4% it is questionable how much more they can shift lower sustainably.
GDP has taken a big hit – figures out today show a 0.3% fall. Although these are largely statistical noise there is a case to be made that National Insurance hikes, minimum wage increases and other effects in April are putting a lot of pressure on the economy.
And this is what we’ve got at the moment, the perfect storm in a teacup of our times. We sit and watch a load of noise on what is going on in the economy, while the rest of us just try and get by, our wallets feeling tighter by the day.
Because I don’t know about you, but things feel tight for me at the moment and I’m meant to be fucking financial whizz. Times are hard and they aren’t getting better. We’ve cut tons of our discretionary spending and it still feels like not enough.
If this is being replicated up and down the land then the country is in real trouble.
The unemployment is what worries me the most (and I am sure worries Whitehall the most). History tells us when large numbers of people find themselves out of work, angry and disenfranchised – that is the moment when the nation is in greatest peril.
I pray for better days to come.
Photo credits: Flickr
