Britain is broke. This is the message that Rachel Reeves has just delivered to the nation as she announced forthcoming cuts to public spending and investment. Reeves claims that the Tories left the country in a much greater fiscal mess than the Labour Party could have realized while they were in opposition — and it’s now up to her to fix it.
Her claim is reminiscent of that made by the Tories in 2010. David Cameron and George Osborne justified their austerity agenda based on the argument that Labour’s reckless spending had damaged the nation’s economy and that tough choices would have to be made to get things back on track. Pat McFadden echoed Cameron’s language today, when he said that the chancellor was going to have to make some “very difficult spending decisions.”
A swathe of proposed infrastructure projects are set to be axed — including plans to build forty new hospitals laid out by Boris Johnson and plans to sell off yet more publicly owned property.
Reeves has also chanced upon some more positive revenue-generating measures. She plans to curb nonessential spending on private consultants, who have spent decades pushing the marketization of the public sector — an agenda that has reduced efficiency and accountability while increasing costs. The road tunnel bypassing Stone Henge is also set to be dropped, which, as Siân Berry has already pointed out, is the right decision made for all the wrong reasons.
These measures will, however, only get Reeves so far. To paraphrase Margaret Thatcher, the problem with neoliberalism is that you eventually run out of public assets to sell.
More cuts will be coming down the road. And we are certainly not likely to see much-needed increases in spending on areas like health, social care,…
La suite est à lire sur: jacobin.com
Auteur: Grace Blakeley
