This week’s budget looks set to be much like Keir Starmer’s government: a cause for genuine optimism – but also a trigger for plenty of anxiety and dread.
Hiked business taxes, it seems, will be used to help the NHS. Thanks to Rachel Reeves’s changes to fiscal rules, there will also be a spurt of borrowing to fund infrastructure projects, including the rebuilding of crumbling schools and hospitals. Social housing is to receive a modest boost. But there is a lot of talk about other budgets continuing to be squeezed, not least when it comes to the money that goes from Whitehall to local councils that are already in dire financial straits. And here, we alight on something that the chancellor would do well to remember: the fact that austerity often turns out to be very, very expensive.
