The Guardian view on the 2018 budget: end austerity for the nation’s sake | Editorial

The Guardian view on the 2018 budget: end austerity for the nation’s sake | Editorial: This is supposed to be the last budget before Brexit. Without a radical shift in policy Theresa May’s rhetoric of ‘ending austerity’ is fundamentally disingenuous

When Theresa May addressed the Conservative party conference earlier this month, her audience were primed for what she had to say about Brexit. But the most interesting part of the speech was when she pledged to “end austerity”. The British public are fed up with the idea that after the financial crash the country could cut itself to growth. But the state has been deliberately rolled back, reducing aggregate demand when the economy would have benefited from it. The result has been an immiseration of ordinary people and the forced decay of the public realm. Austerity failed as it turned a nascent recovery into stagnation.

The problem for Mrs May’s Treasury is that it has to square two conflicting aims: that of ending austerity and that of meeting self-imposed fiscal targets. By borrowing more, and with stronger than expected tax receipts, there’s a possibility that the chancellor, Philip Hammond, could in Monday’s budget ensure that no government department need face any drop in its real-terms spending per person after 2020. That might be construed as ending austerity. Getting to that point depends largely on whether Mrs May is capable of successfully navigating the intellectual and political minefield that is Brexit.

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