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By Sam Macrory - 21st October 2010
For a chancellor who had just announced the biggest scaling back of public spending since World War II, George Osborne looked remarkably unconcerned.
In fact, most MPs in the chamber yesterday afternoon appeared to take the announcement of £81bn of cuts to public services with limited fuss.
The Conservatives liked what they heard, the Liberal Democrats had been told to like what they would hear, while little more than the odd cry of horror and shake of the head was seen or heard from the Labour benches.
Just minutes before the chancellor got to his feet, opposition MPs had been bawling, jeering and generally acting up during prime minister's questions.
Osborne's 61-minute opus seemed to have a soporific effect on them.
Maybe that's because there was little to surprise them after many months of ground-laying and a morning of leaked announcements, or perhaps the magnitude of seeing " Britain step back from the brink", as Osborne promised, had got to them.
This was, largely, a strong performance from the chancellor, despite a visitation from the frog which once held court in Iain Duncan Smith's throat each Wednesday.
Osborne won't have minded: an annoying cough was about as bad as it got as he mapped out the "hard road...[which] leads to a better future".
Despite the chorus of gloom that preceded the CSR announcement, the chancellor had crafted a good news story for everyone.
Health and international development budgets are ring-fenced, education is largely intact, and some new roads will be built too.
So the home office, ministry of justice, DCLG, transport and DCMS will all be badly hit, but there's cheer to be found.
"Policing visibility" – does that mean numbers? – is expected stay at present levels despite a 16 per cent police budget cut; councils will be allowed to choose how to spend their – slashed by 7.1 per cent for four years – budgets; and you can still get into museums and galleries for free.
Labour looked traumatised as a policy that was once theirs was claimed as a Conservative victory.
There are smaller losers in the bigger picture: train fares will rise by three per cent above inflation; £7bn extra cuts to the welfare budget have been identified; the BBC's licence fee will be frozen for six long years; the pension age will rise sooner than expected; and, of course, students will pay a higher price for the right to got to university.
But Osborne picked his victims well; none of these are groups are known for forming truly damaging protest bodies or causing the Daily Mail to launch a front page assault in the government's direction.
There are, however, the half a million public sector works braced to experience the confidence-shattering experience of losing their job.
It is a humbling number, but Osborne was briefly unimpressive as he skirted over the personal pain with little fuss.
"Natural turnover" would account for most of this number promised the chancellor, but "we're all in this together" rings a little less true when it is your desk that is being cleared for the last time.
Still, the additional funding being set aside to "support the Big Society" project should soften the blow.
Alan Johnson used rather more empathetic language, with a message that was altogether easier on the ear on than Osborne's.
"We have just seen people cheering the deepest public cuts in living memory," began the shadow chancellor.
"For many of them", added Johnson, pointing in the direction of the opposition benches, "this is what they came into politics for….I don't believe the prime minister and the chancellor sufficiently understand the worries up and down the country".
Osborne hadn't done real lives, and Johnson should win credit for at least trying.
Where he fell well short, however, was a failure to offer any sort of forensic analysis of the economic sums contained within the CSR.
Given the limited time Johnson had available, perhaps this was to be expected, but the shadow chancellor did not provide any substance for the "alternative approach" to fixing Britain's deficit.
Ed Miliband seemed to shrink into his suit; Ed Balls, the man who felt he should have been chancellor, left the chamber at haste without so much of a glance of acknowledgement in either Johnson's or Miliband's direction.
In his reply to Johnson, the real chancellor began with a devastating assessment of his new shadow's performance.
"He's a nice guy, but he's in the wrong job. Either member of the Balls family would have done a better job."
This was a highly political offering from the chancellor, and the presentation was largely impressive too.
While Osborne could have been more human, he seemed to pass over the pain with limited fuss.
The cuts were set out, the details were set to one side.
But there was little evidence in the chamber of the pain that will soon be felt across the country.
Sam Macrory is political editor of The House Magazine.
Article Comments
At RNIB we were optimistic when Iain Duncan Smith outlined his vision to help people into work and make work pay, so it is shocking that in reality it is disabled people of working age who will be worst hit. The cuts announced today will sharply reduce the living standards of blind and partially sighted people who are already amongst the most vulnerable and poorest in the country.
Older disabled people will feel the pinch, but it is disabled people of working age who will bear the greatest burden of these cuts.
Steve Winyard, RNIB head of policy and campaigns
21st Oct 2010 at 9:26 am
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