So that’s it, then: austerity is well and truly over. It wasn’t a bluff: the Chancellor, egged on by Theresa May, has actually gone and done it, delivering by far the biggest Giveaway Budget of recent times.
The deficit will actually go up next year as a share of national income, after years of decline, and the Chancellor will be splashing out an astonishing £30.5 billion a year extra by 2023-24.
It’s real money, not mere tinkering, and it represents a genuine change of direction, a final rupture with the George Osborne, post-crisis years.
Gone is the idea that the Treasury’s priority is to balance the books, better to prepare for the next inevitable downturn, or even to store up cash for Brexit.... Telegraph.
