Lest we forget, here is an audit of the state of the country Labour inherits. Pin it up, brand it into public memory so no one can forget the ruination caused primarily by 14 years of crushing, growth-killing, public service-stripping austerity. The purpose of the book I’ve written with David Walker, The Only Way is Up, published today, is to draw a baseline from which to judge all that Labour does from now on: in future, look back on this benchmark to measure how it did.
Curiously, because of the mayhem caused by their riotous successors, a myth has grown that David Cameron and George Osborne were somehow Tory moderates by post-Brexit standards. But Cameron’s nonchalant demeanour, shielded by Nick Clegg’s willing connivance, disguised the extreme nature of an ideological first budget that set the trajectory for all the Tory years. Remember this: only seven weeks into power, Osborne announced a budget in which the balance of spending cuts to tax rises was 77% to 23%. That included £17bn cut from government departments; £11bn cut from benefits; a triple-lock rise for pensioners while freezing child benefit; freezing public sector pay; the lowest-ever real-terms increase in NHS funding; and petty meanness such as ending health in pregnancy grants and cutting maternity grants beyond the first child, while reducing corporation tax and raising the threshold for national insurance paid by employers. It set the tone for the years to come.
