Budget 2018: Chancellor does the minimum to avoid austerity deepening, but this was no windfall budget to undo the hurt

By the end of the next five year period, the government will be spending £30 billion more a year - the largest rise in public spending since 2010. That's the headline that the government will want to see rolling out.

But that is only the surface appearance. The reality is - as Institute of Fiscal Studies Director Paul Johnson said - £30 billion was the minimum to stave off deeper cuts. And the benefit of that spending goes squarely to the NHS.

While no one is going to dispute the NHS feeling the benefit of increased public spending, in this budget the increased spending on healthcare disguises the reality underneath of public spending stagnating - the cuts of the past decade are not being undone and departments may face more cuts ahead.

Measures in this budget were plentiful, but it was money spread thin. Just £800 million for local government, £1.0bn for Defence, £160 million for counter-terrorism policing, £400 million one-off emergency fund for schools, £420 million for highway repairs.

There was a range of handwaved increases for tech and infrastructure to the tune of £1.6bn plus. A mixed bag of measures for apprenticeships worth £650 million. A package of complex investment incentives made up of reliefs and loans.

A 'co-funded' £650 million to renovate high streets. The headline Business Rates cut (said to cost £900 million) - a policy where it is still unclear who will bear the burden, the Treasury or local councils, as the Chancellor has already announced the intention to let councils keep larger percentages of the rates. There was a few hundred million to speed up housing developments and around £4bn for the city regions and the devolved administrations.

For households, there was a £200 million a year increase to 'transition support' for those moving over to Universal Credit and the work allowances were to be relaxed to, at a cost of £1.7bn, to mitigate the impact of the new welfare system on the poorest for which the government had been criticised - but only once the roll out is completed, which could be deferred for a long time at this rate.

There is also the cost to be calculated of tax cuts, including the freezes to a series of duties and the further increase in the personal income tax thresholds - up to £12,500 for earnings before tax applies and a higher rate threshold increased to £50,000.

In total, there was about £7bn spread over the next few years, plus the cost of tax cuts, with perhaps less than £4bn in new one-off spending - and a little under £2bn deferred until the rollout of Universal Credit has been completed. It appears the NHS will get an amount reaching more than £20bn a year by 2023.

The economic forecasts, and tax receipts, gave the Philip Hammond what he wanted: the ability to achieve a surplus and completely wipe out the deficit, so the debt could begin to come down at a faster rate. However, the needs of the NHS in crisis seem to have pressed the Chancellor to action.

Otherwise, Hammond stayed true to form. He preferred to use his room for new measures on tax cuts - to 'keep money in pockets' - than funding public services in plight. In fact, to keep in track, how the Chancellor used his headroom means that there will probably be more department funding cuts to come.

Austerity is not over. At best, the Chancellor Philip Hammond has stumped up the bare minimum cash to stop austerity further deepening. Even then it is a temporary measure, as the Spending Review he announced for next year will likely reveal that there are still more cuts to come.

Chancellor Hammond begins constructing the Tories framing for their budget

Chancellor Philip Hammond took to the stage at the Conservative Party conference to tell his party that they had to make the case of capitalism - and must first and foremost always be the party of business.

On the one hand, this was the latest barrage in a war of words within the Conservative ranks - torn by Brexit and the deep reservations of the business community. On the other, it's also laying the groundwork for the budget.

Hammond told the conference that the party couldn't afford to be seen as the party of the status quo. The Chancellor trailed the possibility of some tax rises to increase spending, but warned against trying to match Labour penny-for-penny.

We've heard this before.

The budget is coming up and the party delivering it are positioning their pitch, delivering up framing devices for the media to use in the coming weeks. For the Tories, they cannot afford to lose control of the message.

In recent months, even senior ministers have been defying the government with a whole barrage of comments to the media. It's making PMQs a whole lot easier for Corbyn and forcing No 10 and No 11 to waste their time running around putting out fires.

For instance, when the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) felt the need to express it's dismay about Brexit - and the danger of leaving the EU without a deal - a former government Brexit minister labelled them a 'grave menace' to the UK's prospects.

That's not a good look for a party that sees itself as the true representative of business. No wonder the Chancellor is calling for the party to get back on message. But there's more.

The Chancellor is also dropping little hints that there might be some tax rises - though these aren't yet more than hints - with an eye to some slight increases in spending.

Hammond finally loosened some of the purse strings this year, with a slight relaxing of public sector pay restrictions. But they were only very slightly relaxed and spending measures in the last budget were far below the kind of intervention for which the UK economy is crying out.

The consensus on the economy - and on Brexit - seems to be moving away from the Conservatives. Conceding the possibility of a spending increase lays the groundwork for framing the measures Hammond will announce on budget day.

In previous budgets, Hammond has talked up restricted spending and paying down the deficit only to deliver up, at times uncosted, spending increases - even if only small ones. The order of the day was austerity, but spending was needed.

Now, the consensus is shifting towards much larger public investment than Conservatives are prepared to meet. And so the Chancellor is preparing the ground to present the next budget as one that will deliver responsible spending.

Yet behind the narrative, there is little reason to expect anything but more of the same from the Treasury. Brexit is a hinderance and while the deficit has been reined in, the debt has ballooned under the Conservatives.

And who is going to be happy with Tories raising taxes? The last time Hammond tried to make a major tax adjustment, he had to withdraw his self-employed National Insurance fix within a week of presenting it.

In politics, the next best thing to delivering policies in line with the consensus is to get every believing that you're doing just that - without having to go to the trouble of spending the money. Expect this narrative to build through October.

Budget 2017: Hammond gets a second attempt at Budget 2017, but will he act?

Photograph: NATO Summit Wales 2014 by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (License) (Cropped)

On Wednesday, Chancellor Philip Hammond will present his second Budget of 2017. It has been trailed with promises of doing more. But the big question is whether any of the measures will be enough.

Between the growth of wages being anaemic, price rises eating away at households and the private sector not stimulating any positive movement by holding back from investment, it's being argued that Hammond has cornered himself against his own fiscal rules.

The government has made big promises - or at least big announcements, with little that is tangible behind them. The governing reality has frequently been the denial of the existence of a crisis, making excuses or tinkering around the edges.

Consider the big pledges Hammond has made on housing. The Chancellor has refused much needed additional funding, so tinkering measures - such as adjusting stamp duty or loosening restrictions on councils borrowing to build homes - are expected to carry the burden of getting the government to 300,000 new homes a year.

That will mean achieving the completion of around 100,000 extra homes, each year, to reach the target. Which makes it relevant to note that this is, of course, the same pledge that hasn't been met over the last seven years - at times struggling to reach 100,000 at all, never mind an extra 100,000.

These kind of promises, made over and again only to be missed, serve to undermine future pledges to do more. So too, do gaffes like Philip Hammond's Mitt Romney -esque announcement on Sunday that there are no unemployed people (there are).

It hurts the government too, that funding is denied where it is asked for by services, but is magically pulled out of thin air to solve the latest Conservative political crisis - a billion to secure a DUP-Con deal, for example.

The denials, excuses and tinkering extend to other areas. The NHS is expected to be denied the £4 billion in extra funding it's chief has demanded and the existence of a healthcare crisis has been refused.

These attitudes, these tinkering measures, point towards Hammond's approach to the last Budget, which responded to big challenges with a 'steady as she goes' attitude, spending in the millions not the billions.

There are questions still ahead, however, and people who remain vulnerable. What tinkering will help those women, particularly young women, suffering from period poverty? How will tinkering, with cautious suggestions of reducing waiting times, deal with welfare debt traps?

Universal Credit, in the midst of a disastrous rollout, is exacerbating problems - like mounting rental arrears and the simple fact of more than a month without a means on which to live - that are entangled with all areas of life for the most vulnerable.

While the government may be more focused on avoiding any further embarrassments, of which it has had a string lately, by avoiding any backtracks and climbdowns - such as the major reversal on self-employed National Insurance changes back in the spring.

But now is not the time for 'little c' conservatism. Change will perhaps undermine the Conservative position, ever talking of the chaos Labour will unleash by deviating from their fiscal restrictions.

But the Tories failure to match their rhetoric with reality is a party affair. The wellbeing of the people has to come before the wellbeing of the party. It is time to act.

General Election 2017 - The Budget: Progressive optimism vs Tory pessimism

In the general election campaign so far, there's a determination on the Right to spread the idea that their own plans are sensible and that their opponent's are chaotic and don't add up. But that's a crudely simplistic narrative and it comes with a couple of main assumptions that need to be broken through.

On the first assumption: none of the six main parties in England, Wales and Scotland are calling for a drastic overhaul to Britain's economic system. On the second: most economic systems work on their own terms. The sums will add up, whoever is in government. The biggest difference between progressive and conservative versions is their contrasting optimism and pessimism.

While conservatives, and progressives, will try to make the management of the budget a question of competence, or a question of right and wrong answers, those are not the primary questions facing voters. The real question to consider first, is: what are you trying to achieve?

How Ideology affects Economics

All approaches to the economy are ideological: they propose a set of steps to follow, with an intended outcome - an intentional attempt at shaping society to maximise certain behaviours and to minimise others.

When looking at the pitches made by progressives and conservatives, there are two elements you should consider, one for each of the two main categories of public spending - Current and Capital.

For clarity: Current spending is the day-to-day spending on the departmental budgets, historically offset against government revenue. Capital spending is long term infrastructure investment, usually funded by government borrowing.

On Current spending, you need to consider the question of intervention vs laissez faire: do you consider government action in any given policy area to be helping or interfering?

On Capital spending, you need to consider whether to invest in the future or tackle public debt: do you consider public debt or out-of-date technology and buildings for schools, hospitals, or roads and rails for businesses, the bigger burden on the future?

These two questions are deeply connected.

How entwined they are can be illustrated by the long term plan pursued by the Tories. Planning to 'balance' the budget by having both Current and Capital spending offset by revenue, severely limits how much the government can do in the present and for the future. Even more so as they pursue a huge reduction in the proportion of Britain's GDP, the country's gross wealth, the government is spending.

Now, borrowing to fund Current spending, on the day to day department costs, would theoretically be adding to the public debt at the expense of the future (hence the Tories popular refrain about not burdening our children). But Labour - whether you take the vision for the treasury as assembled by Brown, Balls or McDonnell - has not and does not intend to do that.

Under Labour and the Liberal Democrats, the intention has been - from at least the leaderships of John Smith and Paddy Ashdown - to follow a Keynesian approach: to balance just Current spending against tax revenues, thereby not accumulating public debt to pay for the needs of the present.

This approach does, however, leave Capital spending to be funded by borrowing.

The reasoning behind this is that the longer term Capital spending behaves much differently to Current spending. For a government, borrowing is cheap and the added value created by using it for long term investment is huge - so much so that the actual cost of borrowing is ultimately offset by the increased economic growth that results, and the rise in tax revenue that follows.

How to fund investment

The progressive view of these budget questions has a particular focus on Capital spending, refusing the simplistic calculation that public debt equals a burden on the future. Public debts, within reason and where they result from investment in the future, are largely harmless.

But the negative impact of poor infrastructure, on every area of society, could be disastrous. Just look at the mess that resulted from outdated operating systems on NHS computers. But the same point extends to more mundane situations: old and crumbling school buildings, potholed and traffic strewn roads, ports with insufficient capacity, a telecommunications network that doesn't keep up with the needs of people and businesses.

There are, of course, always attempts at being clever in order to reduce borrowing for Capital projects, even when they aren't covered by tax revenues. New Labour tried something new, expanding on plans they inherited to seek out private investors for its controversial and now infamous 'Private Finance Initiatives', as a way to fund Capital spending without adding to the public debt.

The New Labour plan for private-funded public investment built hospitals - but the private sector expects returns. The PFIs left those institutions with the expectation to deliver astronomical returns on those investments - some £300bn all told - and private benefactors continue to receive interest payments from hospital trusts in the hundreds of millions.

In a way, New Labour's approach resembles the Coalition plan for funding higher education - shifting a public debt, weighing on the Current budget, onto citizens as private debt. In a stroke, a chunk of Current spending and public debt was privatised.

But like the burdens that were shifted onto the backs of hospital trusts, the treasury saw a clever accounting trick,  not the social impact of burdensome debt - though at least more limitations were put in place to protect students than the hospital trusts received with PFIs. In either case, the financial burden ends up on the public books anyway.

The Conservatives plan was to oppose borrowing and fund both Current and Capital only with tax revenues. From a progressive view this was reckless, as it would result in one of two outcomes: it would mean slashing spending on people's wellbeing in the present, while still having them pay tax to fund Capital projects that will never bear fruit for them, or it would mean slashing both to endlessly pay off mostly harmless debt.

The underlying motivations for conservatives to pursue this path is as simple as 'faith' in the market. A belief that private schemes are better than public action - seeing public action as interference that just distorts outcomes. Instead of taking the advantage of scale provided by the collective public option, where resources are pooled to maximise their use, conservatives prefer personal private schemes of insurance to pay for services.

How the government finances stand

The overriding aim of this privatising conservative mentality is to fight against 'dependence'. But to pursue that low tax, low interference, approach, that promotes private action, is not compatible with maintaining well funded public services. At some point, something will have to give. To emphasise the point, consider how the public finances stand after seven years of Tory government.

Current spending stands this past year at around £720 billion to £740 billion in revenue, while Capital spending sits at around £80 billion. As the Tories combine Current and Capital spending to calculate the deficit, the public debt increased by about £59 billion.

That will mean, in the coming years - helped perhaps if revenues rise due to economic recovery or growth - 'balancing' the budget will still require a combination of tax rises and budget cuts, to both Capital and Current spending, amounting to over £60 billion a year - and perhaps more, if the aim is to produce a surplus with which to pay down the public debt.

We know that some £22 billion is to come from the NHS, through the finding of 'savings'. Another £3 billion is coming from schools, thanks to recent funding changes. More will come from the welfare freeze. There is clearly an intention to clear some of the cost of social care off the public books by making middle class homeowners pay with their assets. But that still leaves a lot of cuts.

As for the Liberal Democrat and Labour plans, both are actually fairly similar and neither are that tremendously radical. In fact, they're downright sensibly Keynesian. Both intend to balance the Current, day-to-day departmental, spending against tax revenues - with modest tax rises, mostly on the rich, making more room for manoeuvre.

And here is something interesting. On the measure of balancing the Current budget: it's already balanced. In fact it's in surplus. By some £20 billion. It is projected to be in surplus by about the same amount next year. The previous year the Current budget was only £3 billion in deficit. If the job was to rebalance government spending and revenue, the job is nearly three years done.

With their commitments fully costed, either Labour or the Lib Dems would come into government with a very positive outlook on the public finances - seeing the public books as being in a healthy state. The positivity of either of these parties would alone be a drastic turn around from the doomsaying Tories, who promise nothing but ever more cuts.

It is remarkable the affect that optimism and positivity alone can have in economics, particularly in contrast to the Tories doom and gloom and neverending warnings. But the renewed public investment, called for by all progressive parties, could provide a huge long term boost to Britain. From the mass building of new homes to long term support for innovative new industries - particularly in green energy - there would be a lot to be optimistic about.

How we frame debt matters

As for the deficit and debt? Well, how these are drawn up may have to change when the Tories are eventually ousted, because the way we frame these matters. Conservatives have been very successful at getting into circulation the idea that fiscal credibility means opposing public debt. Progressives must counter that narrative by reframing the ideas.

If the value added by Capital spending vastly outweighs its cost - thus removing it as a factor in balancing a budget - it might well be worth starting to calculate it separately from the deficit and debt which results from the Current budget. That means separating out public debt into two categories: productive Capital debt and unproductive deficit debt.

The progressive aim will be responsibility with productive Capital debt and credibility in tackling and avoiding the unproductive Current deficits and debt. Consider: In the three years between 2015 and 2018, there will have been a Current budget surplus of £47bn. The deficit in that period, that Tories use to justify austerity, is the result of £233bn in Capital spending - investment in long term projects.

That means, at the end of that three year period, around 12% of our total public debt is just from that productive long term investment. When you consider the long term, positive impact of that Capital spending, it makes the public debt a lot less intimidating. It also resets priorities.

How we move forward

To be a progressive is to be an optimist - to be believe that people have the power to change things for the better. While government spending is not the be-all-end-all mechanism for that, progressives argue that it has an important role to play and is currently being poorly utilised.

There are huge challenges to face and most them require sturdy long term commitment. Poverty needs to be addressed with affordable housing and energy, and with compassionate welfare that gets people back on their own feet.

Britain's imbalanced economy needs restructuring around innovative new industries and businesses, spread out across the regions, with green energy power them and the technical skills to run them.

The public sector is able to deliver that long term investment in a way private finance has not yet been able to match. It is part of the solution. The next step is to grasp that idea and to pursue it with positivity and energy. Progress is possible and austerity not inevitable.

The Budget: Hammond's budget all about tweaks - spending headlines mostly in the millions rather than the billions

Philip Hammond delivered his first budget today. Photograph: NATO Summit Wales 2014 by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (License) (Cropped)

Philip Hammond looked relaxed, even made jokes, as he delivered his first - and apparently Britain's last - Spring Budget. The Chancellor's budget was one tweaks, all framed as adjustments to increase fairness. He began by summarising current economic trends, noting the highest number of women in employment ever. Growth projections are up slightly, but a projected drop in borrowing is only short term.

The long term economic plan of his predecessor George Osborne, to eliminate the deficit and produce a surplus to whittle away the national debt, was much delayed. Its aims where pushed back again by Hammond today. The promised fiscal surplus now not likely be seen until a long way into the 2020s - at least.

As for spending, the numbers he was pitching were all notably in the millions rather than the billions. £200 million for school repairs. £100 million for A&Es. A few hundred million for devolved administrations. £700m for councils to tackle urban congestion. The one exception appeared to £2 billion for Social Care - yet that was immediately qualified as being spread over three years.

Those spending commitments were companied by big companies seeing Corporation Tax fall again, as planned, to 17%. Perhaps as a counter to the criticism Conservatives have faced for their tax cuts for those at the top end, Hammond did however announce a halving of Director-shareholders' tax-free dividend allowance - noting it as a very generous tax break for investors.

For income taxes and wages that affect the overwhelming majority of people, the Personal Income Tax Allowance and the National Living Wage will both increase, to £11,500 and £7.50 respectively. The Universal Credit taper rate will also be reduced from 65% to 63% for earnings over allowances. Yet the overall positive impact of these is likely to be slim.

It is not surprising then that Jeremy Corbyn attacked the Chancellor's budget as one of "utter complacency". Corbyn painted a picture of people in precarious work - unsure of where they'll find work or what money they may make tomorrow, queueing at food banks and one of a million working households getting housing benefit because working pay doesn't cover the rent - for whom there were few measures.

The Labour leader expressed anger that public servants have still seen no pay rise in seven years, due to the Government's freeze on pay, and that no funding security has been given to the NHS despite there being an obvious crisis, despite the fact that corporations are still going to get their year on year tax cut.

The Chancellor's budget has offered only a range of small spending increases, in a very concise series of measures, and it is hard to see them as sufficient. Analysts, such as Kamal Ahmed at the BBC, have characterised the budget as representing 'pain delayed' - taking advantage of the short term boost that Government finances are experiencing this year.

This is not the start of a public investment led drive to build a path out of austerity. With the debt and deficit still hanging heavily over Britain, these feel like stop-gap measures to assuage certain political pressures in the present, and to ease the way to the further austerity that waits ahead.

Budget Preview: Will Hammond act to end Conservative pattern of money being redistributed away from most vulnerable?

With the National Debt is still rising, will the Chancellor be able or willing to find some money to invest in essential services? Photograph: Pound Coins from Pixabay (License) (Cropped)

Philip Hammond faces his first budget as Chancellor on Wednesday and he has a lot of pressure to handle. The overall Conservative promise to alleviate the country's debt is still a long way from started and there are spending decisions that Hammond will find it difficult to avoid addressing.

Funding plans for Schools, Social Care and Personal Independence Payments (PIPs) all indicate a troubling pattern of money being redistributed away from the poorest and most vulnerable areas that need it most - not an image that Theresa May, if she is to keep her promise of a Britain that works for everyone, will want to reinforce.

Schools, even those under financial pressure, face up to 3% in budget cuts. Social Care has seen billions cut from the system. And, Theresa May's government is trying to wriggle out of coughing up more money to cover a court-ordered expansion of the PIPs welfare programme.

How the Chancellor addresses these concerns is important. He has already done the press rounds in the past week to assert there will be no big spending and rolled out, the now standard Tory line, that problems are less the result of low funding and more of not following 'best practice' (BBC, 2017). But will that line be maintained through Wednesday?

On Schools, Hammond faces a situation that will be hard to explain away. The government announced plans for a new funding formula in December, that came with the less than reassuring 'assurance' that no school would lose out by more than 3% (Weale, 2016).

That is hardly going to offer succour to schools in poorer areas. As Andy Burnham (Bean, 2017), Labour nominee for Mayor of Greater Manchester, asked the Prime Minister in the Commons: how does the Prime Minister expect to get more working class children to university by cutting schools funding across the North West?

Meanwhile, Social Care has become the particular Tory baggage with which to pummel the government. With £4.6 billion in cuts since 2010 and shortfall predicted (Full Fact, 2016), it is about the hardest area for the government to argue that funding cuts don't make a difference.

In fact, the previous Chancellor George Osborne did begin to respond - but only with an, at best modest, increase in funding, that was planned to come in with this budget, but would only raise around £200 million nationally (Merrick, 2016; BBC, 2016).

The plan also does not actually involve a boost in cash from the government itself, but rather put it onto local councils to raise more in tax - up to 2% extra. However, the one, and particular poignant, flaw in this approach is that wealthier areas will be able to raise more for themselves than the poorest and most vulnerable who need it most.

Across Schools and Social Care, there is a very clear pattern emerging of money being withdrawn from where it is needed most to make tax savings for those from wealthier areas - simply, regressive economics.

That pattern is reinforced in the government's insistence upon not spending the extra £3.7 billion that an expansion of Personal Independence Payments, ordered by the courts, would call for across four years (BBC, 2017{2}) - less than a billion a year to take care of people primarily with mental health problems.

An aide to Theresa May was heavily criticised for his callous remark that funding need to kept to only the "really disabled" (BBC, 2017{3}) - for which he later apologised - but it summed up the Conservative attitude.

Under Conservative government, the services people depend upon in their everyday lives are being squeezed. Money is being siphoned out programmes that serve the most vulnerable and leaving them to find ways to fend for themselves - whether they're young, old or disabled.

There are rumours that the Chancellor will respond with a little more money than is currently planned (Kuenssberg, 2017). However, a lot more investment is needed to convince anyone that the government is moved by a real comprehension of the difficulties people actually face when the public services they rely on are disappearing.

Autumn Statement: Austerity hasn't worked, yet Chancellor's response is much smaller than Britain's big problems demand

House building pledge typifies problems with Chancellor Philip Hammond's Autumn Statement - it's too little action to tackle a much bigger problem. Photograph: Regency Houses from Pixabay (License) (Cropped)

John McDonnell, the Labour Shadow Chancellor, described the Autumn Statement as a budget that does not make up for six wasted years. That after all of the sacrifice, over more than half a decade, despite continuous failures, austerity will continue.

That is not an unfair assessment. For this statement, Chancellor Philip Hammond had to juggle the policy inheritance from George Osborne, meeting the promise of Theresa May to help those just getting by, and the economic pressures that are depressing growth, disincentivising investment and pushing up debt.

The result has been a budget statement that sticks close to the status quo, with only some token, already scheduled, easing measures: the personal allowance advancing to £11,500, the 'national' living wage to £7.50, and the welfare withdrawal taper rate down by just two pence in the pound.

The Chancellor's focus remains upon the broader economy, not least with tax cuts continuing for big business as Corporation Tax falls again to 17%. The promise that these subsidies, and policies like the productivity fund, make to people is that if they help the economy, that prosperity will extend to them.

Yet many of the Chancellor's announcements were effectively cancelled out by the facts. He lauded the fact that the UK has its highest employment and lowest unemployment, with a labour market recovery serving everyone. Yet much of the new work has already been reported as being unstable, insecure and precarious.

Despite confirming plans to increase public investment, that comes on the back of years of delayed, stalled or unfunded infrastructure investment plans that have been shifted from announcement to announcement. Meanwhile economic growth is depressed, private investment remains low and debt is still rising.

And on house building, a necessary step to tackling the damaging housing crisis, Hammond has said he will lead a step change in progress on getting them built. Yet his commitment extended to just 40,000 new homes - a long way short of the hundreds of thousands needed, let alone tackle prices and rents escalating beyond what could be credibly referred to as affordable.

While Conservative spokespeople on the cycling news coverage are keen to deflect their failures onto the uncertain circumstances of the times, the reality is that six years of fiscally conservative government has led to a rise in borrowing and a vast increase, even a doubling, of the national debt. Austerity hasn't worked.

Those 'just about managing', as the Tory government labels them, have made huge sacrifices - with less welfare support, with their frontline services embattled, with work that is more precarious for lower pay. But after six years, there is still no pay off. There is no easing. There is still no succour for falling living standards.

If the Government is serious about helping the poorest, the most vulnerable, those most distant from opportunities and living precarious lives, it needs an alternative plan. Fiscal discipline, bringing down debts to reduce the cost of servicing them, is important. But no major economy is working well enough to provide prosperity for the people they're supposed to serve without help from public funds.

Progressives have to construct an alternative plan, that can return more prosperity to the communities that have made big sacrifices to achieve it, but have been alienated from the rewards by austerity. That means getting on with the work that has been put off, like building homes and infrastructure, tackling the cartels that lock communities out of the product of their own resources, with ideas like community energy co-ops, and doing more to support the most vulnerable with healthcare, social care and welfare.

Autumn Statement Preview: Hammond looks likely to ease austerity, but progressives have to believe we can do more

What awaits Britain under a new Chancellor? Photograph: Pound Coins from Pixabay (License) (Cropped)

On Wednesday, Chancellor Philip Hammond will present the Autumn Statement, the half-year update on the Government's progress towards their budget targets.

Under previous Chancellors Gordon Brown and George Osborne, the Autumn Statement became virtually a second budget, a second for the Government to manage and tweak the country's finances. Osborne in particular liked to tinker at every opportunity, adjusting targets again and again, an announcing new surprise policies to keep political opponents off balance.

The new Chancellor, Philip Hammond, as befits his reputation as 'dull', has suggested he'd like the Autumn event to go back to being just a rudimentary update, rather than a full blown budget adjustment. And considering the economic situation, that might not be a terrible idea.

An economy runs principally on the basis of confidence and Hammond has everyone to reassure: Brexiters and 48ers; the banks; businesses big and small, and workers. Whatever advantage Osborne's constant surprises afforded him in the political arena, would only have been yet another element of volatility in an already volatile time.

As well as provide assurance of a steady hand, Hammond must also find a way to satisfy his party's extreme right-wing - while, for sake of the appearance of competence, avoiding the complete repudiation of the actions of the previous Conservative ministry. That means maintaining at least token continuity with his predecessor's insistence upon tackling the deficit at the expense of front line services.

If those matters weren't hard enough to juggle, Hammond must also find a way to meet the new commitments made by the new Prime Minister Theresa May. That means, at the least, finding some way to slow down austerity just enough to help those who are 'just getting by'.

In times of high drama, a period of calm, anchored in fiscal stability and dullness, with no unpredictable moves and longer term planning - that actually sticks to a long term economic plan - would usually be a thing very welcome, for any economy. If that is what Hammond brings, it signals, hopefully, a return  to managing fiscal matters with a long term view, rather than with short term grandstanding better fitting a corporate boardroom.

However, the new Chancellor doesn't have the luxury of simply postponing a little of austerity programme and holding station. To that effect, Hammond has already deprioritised his predecessor's constantly shifting deficit targets and proposed a small increase in spending to a improve some roads, with May herself adding today the promise of a little more research and development funding. These steps are clearly an effort to show concerns - that withdrawing too much Government money, too quickly, will only make straightened times leaner - have been acknowledged.

Yet Hammond is rightfully under pressure from the Left to do more. John McDonnell, the Labour Shadow Chancellor, has also called for the undoing of tax breaks for the richest that were delivered by George Osborne, eve as frontline services and local councils were subjected to stringent budget restrictions.

With the money saved from reversing those measures, McDonnell has called for dropping the next round of welfare cuts, planned out by the treasury under Osborne - that will hit hardest precisely those who the Prime Minister lately pledged to protect: those 'just getting by'.

Socially and economically, the times have become hard and uncertain, and disproportionately for the most vulnerable - for women, minorities, people with disabilities and the working poor. And each of these groups are exposed to a range of risks, pressures and dangers by declining prosperity and rising desperation, as people turn inwards and shield themselves with hostility towards those who should be their neighbours.

While stability for the Conservatives may stop at settling down jittery markets, progressives want the Government to look further afield: to help calm the fears of ordinary people. Hammond's promises of infrastructure spending and pausing austerity are a start. Yet McDonnell isn't wrong to question the record of the Tories on delivery - Osborne made bigger promises of infrastructure spending, that might have helped stimulate the economy if they had ever seen the light of day.

For progressives, the time is long overdue for a budget with more spending commitments: on research and investment, to help stimulate the economy, creating jobs in the immediate present and to lay the foundation for more down the line; on the critical shortfalls in the NHS and social care budgets; on ending, and even reversing, cuts to welfare, to help people during hard times; and on building many desperately need homes.

All of those commitments are expensive and neither debt nor deficit can be completely ignored. But the present status quo simply is not stable. Worrying  about public debts, themselves fairly stable, weighing on the future as a tax burden is madness when the poor, just to get by, struggle under mounting insecure private debts.

And the Government, on the public behalf, is in the strongest position to help. Even just reversing tax cuts and subsidies for rich corporations and individuals - before you even get to the matter of how cheap interest is on Government borrowing - would go a long way to paying for what's needed.

Stability and reassurance are needed. But the Government must act first to create stability, because right now there is desperation and precariousness bordering on disaster. Progressives have to believe that Hammond can and should do more, before he can declare the ship steady, the waters calm and a course plotted for the harsh waters awaiting Britain outside of the European Union.

Around the World: Corruption, Operation Car Wash and the Rousseff Impeachment

National Congress of Brazil, in Brasilia, where now former President Dilma Rousseff was impeached in two majority votes. Photograph: National Congress of Brazil from Pixabay (License) (Cropped).

Dilma Rousseff has lost her battle against impeachment in Brazil, with the Senate confirming the decision of the Chamber of Deputies to expel her from the office of President (Watts & Bowater, 2016). Three-quarters of Senators voted to impeach her on charges of corruption and mismanagement of the budget.

That is unlikely to be the end of the controversy. But for now, it marks the end of a chain of events set against a backdrop of general unrest, with protests against money being spent on huge international events like the World Cup and the Olympics, instead of on practical measures to support the people - like housing and welfare - and an economy deeply affected by the global crisis.

A lot of the present crisis surrounds Brazilian oil. Accusations of bribery surrounding the state oil company Petrobras surrounding the awarding of contracts and its deep connections in Brazilian politics, was uncovered by the corruption investigation known as Operation Car Wash (Watts, 2016).

The result has been a political crisis that has seen Rousseff's predecessor Lula da Silva set to face a corruption trial and the larger part of the political class implicated in the corruption. Rousseff's adversaries have also manoeuvred to have her thrown out of office, though as she is so far avoided direct connection to the scandal, they have pursued her through accusations of fiscal malpractice (Prengaman, 2016).

The impeachment leaves Rousseff's former ally, and now leading figure amongst her opponents, Acting-President Michel Temer in the office of President. While he has the support of the political Right and business that wants austerity measures imposed, he isn't popular - having been booed during the Olympic opening ceremony.

Like Italy's Mani Pulite (Clean Hands) investigation that wiped away the country's established political system and all of its political parties in the early 1990s, Operation Car Wash has thrown open the doors to show how Brazil's system operates behind closed doors - and no one working within that system is likely to come out clean.

That situation is what has toppled Rousseff. The worry is for the political vacuum that might follow the toppling of the rest of the establishment - in Italy it was occupied by the arch-populist Silvio Berlusconi for twenty years.

Yet despite her defeat in what has been denounced as a parliamentary coup, Rousseff insists upon appealing her impeachment by who she describes as usurpers and coup-mongers (Watts & Bowater, 2016). But against a backdrop of massive political-corporate corruption, it is unclear what more can be done at the federal level until it is all swept away.

Clearly, Brazil needs a path out of this dense tangle of overlapping problems. The clear implication is that a new approach is needed.

One option that has been proposed is to embrace the municipal movement, most notably at work in Barcelona, at the local government elections in October and November (Wyllys, 2016). What municipalism offers is a chance to do things a bit differently.

Movements in Brazil are already organising around municipal principles - Muitxos: Cidade que Queremos (Many: the City We Want) in Belo Horizonte, for example (Gutierrez Gonzalez, 2016) - as a way move power away from political-corporate cliques.

With Brazil's federal politics - where pro-market corporate forces face off with populist social democrats over tax and spend projects like social welfare - mired in corruption and accusations, shifting the focus to local government instead could provide a route for citizens to get into politics in a more direct way and perhaps even start to dismantle the corruption from the ground up.

As elsewhere in the world, national politics has been choked by political-corporate cartels, whether de facto or de jure, that restrict political action and assume the driving seat in decision-making.

That path has lead to failures of leadership, where vigilant oversight is lacking - of which, if anything, Rousseff might be legitimately accused, due to being in a senior position during the height of the corruption and yet claiming no knowledge of what was going on.

Devolving power to citizens in their communities and encouraging open city government could help renew the system. And for the municipal movement itself, success in the cities of Brazil would be a major breakthrough.

It is one thing to argue for open source cities, using the twin means of free online resources and open participatory public spaces, that make the municipality a place where people can express their real political power (Gutierrez Gonzalez, 2016{2}).

It is another entirely to see municipal ideas applied to cities on different continents, with different contexts, and see them challenge massive corruption from below by engaging with people in their own communities and returning hope and power to them.

Budget 2016 Preview: Will the Chancellor again produce an ace in the hole that lets him to put off unpopular cuts?

George Osborne's Autumn Budget Statement promised the UK a bright future. Osborne took the chance offered by predictions of an economy looking more healthy to be a little less conservative with the national finances and drop controversial cuts to the police budget and to tax credits (ITV, 2015).

This time around Osborne is warning of dark clouds and the need to prepare for the worst (BBC, 2016). The Chancellor has been at pains to stress that there will be cuts in order to meet his fiscal targets. There might be some sugar coatings, but the medicine is still predicted to be sour.

However, the Chancellor will surely be hoping to be able, once again, to defy all expectations and match his Autumn reprieves. Yet those reprieves were themselves only temporary. They could only be delays of self-imposed hard choices that Osborne had undertaken to make.

Theresa May stressed that the police would still be expected to find efficiency savings (Travis, 2015) and the dropping of Tax Credit cuts were a diversion, as they were still set to come in later with the Universal Credit (Kuenssberg, 2015). They were also a gamble.

Osborne's Autumn Statement took positive forecasts as an opportunity to not make the unpopular choices, while still working on closing the deficit - betting on the forecasts panning out and with slight tax increases, around the fringes. Attempts were also made to temporarily ease the way for the middle class with the Conservatives' colourfully branded array of saving and house buying assistance - that buys time for much delayed house building (Wright, 2016) by siphoning homes from housing associations, depended on by the least well off, to increase competition in the private markets.

Wednesday's budget might reasonably be expected, by the opposition, to be the overdue reality check for those who voted Conservative last May, with the implementation of all of the delayed austerity measures. All of Osborne's public comments certainly seem to be preparing the ground for the further cuts - 50p in every £100 of government spending as he put it to Andrew Marr on Sunday (BBC, 2016).

Yet its hard to ever be too sure what the Chancellor is planning. Osborne managed expectations in the Autumn towards his plans for cuts to tax credits (Kuenssberg et al, 2015). Yet when the time came, he still found a way to avoid what would have proven a deeply unpopular cut.

This time around, with so much riding on the EU referendum including his own chances of succeeding Cameron as Conservative leader, Osborne is again unlikely to go antagonising voters if it can be avoided. Yet time is undeniably running out to meet his own deadline for eliminating the deficit (Verity, 2016), and small shifts in forecasts could lead to the need for drastically larger cuts to meet those goals.

Hints being dropped about new policies, to be announced on Wednesday, at the least suggest a wish to dampen the impact of announcing cuts. Yet the proposed new savings top-up scheme for the least well off seems to be little but a thin veneer (Mason, 2016) - as it's only likely to help a sixth of those who are supposed to be eligible, with Labour criticising the policy for its unrealistic appraisal of what people can actually afford to save.

Across the floor, Labour's Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell has said he wants to see more investment (BBC, 2016{2}) - putting money into building up domestic industry as a way to rebalance the economy. McDonnell's advisors, like Mazzucato and Stiglitz, have certainly been making the argument that the state has a role to play in rebuilding the economy.

It is certainly hard to see a way forward without a lot of investment from somewhere. Osborne's own hope has been for investment in Britain to come from 'emerging markets', like India and particularly China (The Economist, 2015). For these private and foreign state investments to take the slack and pump money into sectors of the UK economy and infrastructure, according to market needs, so that the Chancellor can cut government spending.

Considering that, while defending the European Union, Osborne argued it was the UK, not the EU, that was responsible for the 'red tape' that puts off investment (Bloom, 2016) - and the Chancellor's desire to stimulate these private and foreign state investments - it might not be a long shot to suggest some sort of deregulation will be included in the budget. It would certainly offer some 'efficiency' cuts in terms of reduced bureaucracy.

If George Osborne has an ace up his sleeve, he has yet to let slip what it will be. The implementation of the National Living Wage (a higher minimum wage for over 25s), very limited savings assistance and the regular increase in the Personal Income Tax Allowance (introduced by the Liberal Democrats), do not amount to much of an offset to the expected large departmental cuts.

Will the Chancellor play some hidden card, or will the full weight of his targets finally begin to fall? He doesn't have much room for manoeuvre. His fiscal deadline is approaching, neither deficit nor debt are under control and his own outlook sees global economic struggles. And yet, after so many other sleights of hand, it would be foolish to rule out the possibility of one more gamble.

Road to Super Tuesday: The US Presidential Primaries have so far been a tale of outsiders rocking the establishment

Texas, with the most delegates, will be the key battleground come Super Tuesday. Photograph: Texas State Capitol in Austin from Pixabay (License) (Cropped)

Tuesday 1st of March marks a key moment in the long and winding US Presidential election. So-called Super Tuesday will see more than ten states, including key state Texas, declare their choices for Democratic and Republican candidates for the Presidency (Weiland, 2016).

Going into Super Tuesday, the primaries for both parties are much closer than previously predicted. The tight races are largely thanks to their being contested by the outsider candidates Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, who are upsetting prior expectations and putting the old two-party system to the sword.

The 2016 US Presidential race was supposed to be a straight race between two clear favourites - one from each party. From amongst the Democrats there was Hillary Clinton, while from the Republicans there was Jeb Bush.

Hillary was a former First Lady, as wife of Bill, and in her own right Secretary of State and a long time Senator. Jeb is the son of one President and the Brother of another, with executive experience as Governor of Florida. The rest appeared to be a formality.

Contrary to first impressions, however, the supporters of neither party where in the mood for a coronation. There were, from the first, insurgent candidacies, but they were paid little heed and given long odds.

Commentary watching the Republican nomination race, in particular, found something between fascination and amusement in how long the list of candidates for the GOP nomination was becoming (Gabbatt, 2015). Where analysis fell on the respective lists in depth, some where given more credibility than others.

Early runner Scott Walker was one such candidate. The Governor of Wisconsin has a controversial record that has proven popular with fiscal conservatives in the GOP (Pilkington & Sullivan, 2015) - including spending cuts and confrontations with unions.

Walker's run for the Republican Party nomination certainly made a lot of sense. As one part of a Wisconsin trio, along with GOP House Speaker Paul Ryan and GOP Party Chairman Reince Priebus, that are trying to set the agenda for the modern Republican Party (Balz, 2011; Healy & Martin; 2015).

The Democrat's version was Martin O'Malley - who was famously the inspiration for the Baltimore-based TV show The Wire. O'Malley entered as the third runner alongside, and 'moderate' alternative to, democratic socialist Sanders and the scandal mired Clinton, clearly hoping to be seen as someone more acceptable to a broader middle ground of voters (Tabor, 2015).

However, all bets were upset by Trump and Sanders.

There is little to be said about Donald Trump from a progressive view, other than to note the apparent popularity of his brand of being offensive to people from almost every demographic group.

Bernie Sanders started the Democratic race with isolated support in only a few Northeastern states and lay nearly 60 points behind Clinton (Daily Kos, 2015). Yet by the Nevada caucus the Vermont Senator was just 5 points adrift (Lewis et al, 2016).

Yet both outside runners still face barriers beyond the Democratic-Republican establishment itself.

Trump's divisive message has kept him stuck in the mid 30s in the percentage polls - although in Nevada on Saturday he did break the 40% barrier (The Guardian, 2016). Meanwhile the more 'mainstream' candidates have together pulled in over 50% over numerous polls.

Coming from almost the opposite direction, Sanders has struggled to get his message out beyond his core of young and working class voters. South Carolina showed this with abundant clarity as Hillary Clinton won 74% of the vote and overwhelmingly with voters who were not white (Walsh, 2016). Clinton, backed overwhelming by the party elite, has campaigned smartly and is so far holding back the rising popular tide.

Regardless of the barriers in their way, the outsiders have none-the-less shaken up the establishment.

This is demonstrated most clearly in the Republican race where mainstream favourite Jeb Bush's campaign ended in complete failure in South Carolina (BBC, 2016), when he dropped out with little to show for millions in fundraising. Marco Rubio, the next to be annointed by the GOP mainstream, inherits a deficit to Trump that it will take huge momentum to overhaul (Stokols & Palmer, 2016).

Super Tuesday will give the first major indications of whether the insurgent candidacies will have the momentum to topple their respective party establishments. Even if the party elite see off the challengers, there doesn't seem to be a positive outcome likely for them.

At best for the Democratic-Republican establishment, it will likely see off a strong opposition run only to be fatally undermined. As seen elsewhere, like in France, the mainstream will limp on hounded by outside forces that sense weakness and opportunity. At worst, the two-party system that has governed the US will not have been broken apart, but rather hacked and hijacked.

Oldham will be the first preview of who is winning the political battles in the public eye

Oldham will host the first by-election of this parliament, triggered by the death of Labour MP Michael Meacher. It will be a set piece political event that might just offer some small insights into whether party ideas are capturing the public imagination. Photograph: Oldham Town Hall by Mikey (License) (Cropped)

On Wednesday the Conservative fiscal plan for the next four and a half years was laid out by the Chancellor. Complete with politically considered back tracks and U-turns, George Osborne's spending review laid out the cuts, caps, and the phasing out and shifting of burdens that we should expect.

Yet, even with all of this information now on the table, the question of how to oppose the Conservative approach is putting Labour in a bind. Labour are trying, though not too hard, to avoid fall into a civil war - the result of which would almost be that the New Labour faction would be forced to leave the party and could even taking a majority of Jeremy Corbyn's party MPs with them.

These events are all very poignantly timed, as the first test for all sides - an important trial run, almost - is coming on the 3rd December in the form of the Oldham West and Royton by-election. From its result, it will be admittedly difficult to extrapolate anything particularly substantial.

Not until April, and the National Assembly and London Mayoral elections will we see a full appraisal of the response of the country to the election of a Conservative majority, its policies on human rights and austerity, and Jeremy Corbyn's new approach as leader of the Labour Party. Yet next Thursday's by-election might just provide a small preview.

Voters in Oldham will be the first to pass direct comment on what was, effectively, Osborne's third budget of the year. Those that turn out at the polls for the by-election will get a chance to say what they think of the Chancellor's offerings.

Despite the fact that the focus for most people will be on the headline of Osborne's likely-to-be-popular U-turn on Tax Credits (BBC, 2015) - and the U-turn on cuts to police budgets that he tried to pass off as a Labour idea - there were other policies to be found in the spending review.

These policies include the gradual phasing out of tax credits, to be replaced with the less supportive universal credit (Allen et al, 2015); a new cap on housing benefit (Cross, 2015); and the replacement of grants for student nurses with loans (Sims, 2015).

According to the assessment by the independent Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS), the poorest will be the most heavily impacted by these changes (Allen et al, 2015) - although that is disputed by Conservatives. Critics have also been sure to point out that austerity is far from over (Wearden, 2015). Further cuts or tax rises may even be necessary if Osborne's gamble on the OBR's positive outlook fails to pay off (Peston, 2015).

Osborne's domestic reforms also appear to match the ideas in his recent speech laying out his plan for the European Union - another issue that may well be on voters' minds. For the Conservatives, the aim is clearly for a deregulated EU that is for business (Sparrow, 2015), rather than citizens - reserving free movement only for trade and money.

Leading the progressive opposition at this point should be the Labour Party. However, Jeremy Corbyn's opposition to intervention in Syria (Wintour, 2015), at least in the present terms and under the present conditions, is proving to be just the latest opportunity for a divide to open up between Corbyn, along with his supporters, and the party's mainstream - particularly in the parliamentary party.

It doesn't seem to be helping to quell the dissent of the few - at the moment, at least - in the Labour Party who support intervention, that even Conservative commentators are saying that the UK's most powerful role right now may well be diplomatic rather than military (Davis, 2015).

There is also the likelihood of a hugely significant event on Tuesday, just days before the by-election, when NHS doctors go on strike, to be followed by two more days of action later in December, if renewed negotiations do not achieve enough ground (Tran, 2015).

Politically, ideologically, there is a lot of pressure building. Yet it won't all be about objective analysis of the impact of policies. Politics is also a contest over the popular perception fought in, and often with, the media. In that game, the Conservatives have tended to fare best, and Osborne has managed to make all of the headlines about how he is protecting, for now at least, those already in the system.

What it is essential for progressives to get across, and rally support behind, is that this is something the Chancellor has only achieved through the shifting of burdens and letting new entrants be hit by the deepest cutbacks (Allen et al, 2015, Cross, 2015). Yet it is always difficult to make heard the narrative based on those who will be hurt in theory, when up against a narrative of those will not now be hurt in the present.

As for other progressive opposition parties, like the Greens and the Liberal Democrats, they will just want to be heard and to see a decent turnout. They both risk being drowned out by the larger narratives coalescing around the two big parties, yet there is room for them to still make an impact. For the Greens, the UN climate change summit in Paris puts the environment and clean energy in the public eye (Vaughan, 2015), while the Lib Dems have been vocal in their opposition to the government over human rights and the rights of refugees (Riley-Smith, 2015) - a key pillar in their plan for a 'Lib Dem Fightback'.

However, set piece events like Thursday's by-election only offer a snapshot impression of where the different factions and parties are, relative to each other, and who is hearing the message sent out by who. The big question - which will likely only be answered in subtle shades of grey - will be whether Osborne has succeeded in getting out the message he wants heard, and whether Corbyn's approach can produce in terms of practical results.

Autumn Statement: Osborne's spending review takes risks & makes U-turns to dodge political storms - but only in the short term

George Osborne wants to be seen as a builder and as a friend to workers. Lower borrowing costs allow him to cut less this time around and tax rises offer more apprenticeships, yet it all rests on a series of gambles. Photograph: The Chancellor with guests at Port of Tilbury on 1 April 2014 by HM Treasury (License) (Cropped)

This was expected to be an announcement of ever deeper cuts than ever before, with £20bn needed to keep on course with Conservative fiscal targets (Kuenssberg et al, 2015). With George Osborne as Chancellor, however, it was never quite possible to be too sure.

The big unexpected move this time around was the Chancellor's decision to drop the proposed cuts to tax credits (Robinson, 2015). Announcing a better than expected fiscal situation, and saying he had listened to concerns, Osborne said it was easier simply to avoid the changes altogether (Politics Home, 2015).

That was accompanied by the announcement of no cuts to police budgets and the frontloading of NHS funding at £6bn next year (ITV, 2015; Dominiczak, 2015). In sum, these announcements gave the impression of a much less stringent budget, on the back of an Office of Budgetary Responsibility (OBR) assessment that more money would be available, with lower borrowing costs, and so less would need to be cut (Reuben, 2015).

These announcements followed the Osborne's habit from previous budgetary statements and announcements, of pulling out a surprise. And yet, for everything that Osborne hasn't cut, he is still gambling on the market bailing him out later by delivering the OBR's predicted strong economic conditions, rewarding him with higher tax receipts, if he is going to meet his own targets.

If expectations and receipts fall short then cuts will still have to be found later. In fact, the observation has been made that the backdown on tax credit cuts is only a temporary stay, as the cuts will still come with its phasing out to be replaced with the universal credit by 2020 (Kuenssberg, 2015; Eaton, 2015).

Burdens are once again being shifted by the Chancellor. Along with the private debts taken on over the last five years by students, joined now by student nurses (BBC, 2015), there will be caps on housing benefits (Peston, 2015). There was also no relief from the Tampon Tax, with the odd decision to maintain the tax but to use it to fund women's charities (Richards, 2015).

The burdens are also being stacked onto local government and the private sector - with new taxes on business to pay for apprenticeships and local government expected to raise local rates to cover certain services (ITV, 2015{2}; Wintour, 2015).

Full analysis of the line-item details will follow from all corners of the media and political world.

Yet the initial impression is that the Chancellor is once again taking a risk. Osborne is gambling on markets and the broader economy to perform well enough to buy him time and space until the political storms blows over - which allows him to wriggle around on the nose cuts, in favour of less dramatic phased changes.

Spending Review Preview: Osborne has led government to bet the house on policies like Right to Buy cutting cost of living

The government's Right to Buy scheme is no more than a stop gap measure in the battle to deal with the housing crisis and does little to shelter the poorest and most vulnerable from affordable housing shortages.

On Wednesday, following PMQs, Chancellor George Osborne will make his Autumn Statement (Parker & Giugliano, 2015). The statement serves as a spending review, assessing how the treasury is faring with its budget plan, a plan that is dependent upon many factors.

The review will give the country a chance to peek inside Number 11 and discover, through the obscuring lens of politics-speak, how the Chancellor intends to achieve his planned cuts (Wheeler, 2015) - particularly after the damage done by Lib Dem, Labour and Crossbencher Lords to his attempts to cut spending on tax credits (BBC, 2015).

The view amongst independent assessors is that Osborne's cuts are set to have a drastic impact on those carrying the heaviest working burdens for the least reward (Ross, 2015; Milligan, 2015). With more money now having to found to lessen the burden on those losing tax credits, there are clear fears that those funds will be found simply by taking even more away from others (Wintour, 2015).

There is only one thing that can temper the impact of Chancellor Osborne's cuts, and that is the much vaunted efficiency of markets that those on the Right put so much faith in. Without increased efficiency, most tellingly demonstrated by a fall in the cost of living, the impact of welfare cuts will be drastic and long-lasting.

By far and away the most impactful part of the cost of living is the cost of housing. The Conservative's darling policy for this end is their 'Right to Buy' scheme, yet the scheme is controversial. The project offers huge discounts for housing association tenants to buy their rented houses, with certain terms and conditions (Sarling, 2015). Yet the project will be costly and the losses could very well fall most hard upon the housing associations themselves and councils, especially in the most deprived areas.

The intention, plainly, is to increase the number of houses on the buyers' market, so as to increase supply, and so competition, in order to decrease costs. However, the plan can only represent a stop gap, buying time for building of more houses. It cannot be a replacement for it.

Back in 2014, Alicia Glen, New York's Deputy mayor for housing and economic development, assessed the issue of housing affordability by drawing attention to problems with the UK's private rental sector (Murray, 2014). Glen remarked that the private rental in the UK is comparatively small and that management of private rental properties on a small scale is expensive and inefficient, stressing that only at a large scale can its costs be effectively reduced.

"The problem is if you don’t do affordable housing as rental housing by definition you’re going to lose that unit unless you have incredibly aggressive enforcement on resale. You could say - and a lot of conservatives would say - there’s nothing wrong with subsidising the production of a unit if a poor person lives there and 10 years later they sell it for a gazillion dollars - they’ve made money and that’s wealth creation. But you’ve lost the unit and so you’re not making any sort of long-term dent in the affordable housing crisis."

And yet, reports are pointing out that the scheme is already failing to tackle the essential problems of the housing crisis (Gallagher, 2015). Instead of increasing the availability of affordable housing, as many as two-fifths of Right to Buy properties have simply been let out privately by their new owners.

This so-called 'pillaging' of social housing is only a temporary means of diverting the housing crisis (Hutton, 2015). It takes affordable housing away from the poorest and most vulnerable to temporarily increase housing supply for those on middle incomes. Yet it doesn't break the cycles of debt and lending, along with asset investments which all drive up prices, and simply adds more properties to yet another housing bubble.

With Osborne's budget, everything depends upon the cost of living consistently falling. Yet without breaking the housing bubble, without a large increase in supply and competition, and without a scaling up of the operation of private rental - a project in which co-operatives should not be ruled out - the essential problems are not going to be fixed. The cost of housing will not fall, and so the cost of living will not fall.

If the cost of living does not fall, then Osborne's huge contraction of state spending, and the services and safety nets that funding supports, mean that the poorest and most vulnerable will be trapped. With cuts to support, along with wages and hours being reduced and made ever less secure, the poorest will be even further excluded - with housing, left in the hands of schemes like Right to Buy, becoming just another social mobility ladder that has been kicked away.