Learner but meaner

From the howling on the opposition benches as George Osborne delivered his sixth budget speech on March 18th, you would think the British state had been ground to a husk over his five-year chancellorship. It was a familiar chorus. The notion that the coalition government’s spending cuts are an ideologically driven wrecking job, spreading anguish to which the Conservative chancellor is icily indifferent, has sustained the Labor Party since its 2010 fall. Hospitals, schools, local government—in their constituencies Labor MPs swear to rescue them all from “Tory cuts”. In Birmingham, the Labor MP Liam Byrne has accused the government of trying to “destroy” Britain’s second city—which is a bit rich considering it was he, as an outgoing Treasury minister, who left the note by which 13 years of New Labor government became instantly defined: “There is no money.” Yet something odd is going on.

Croydon Central, which the Tories hold with a small majority, but whose local government went from blue to red last year, is a swing constituency. Ominously for the Tories, you would think, it has a struggling hospital and its local government budget has been cut by 35%, on a per head basis, making it one of the worst hit in the country.

Recent polling puts Labor narrowly ahead. Yet Gavin Barwell, the local Tory MP, reckons he is well-placed— and an afternoon’s canvassing with him in Woodhall, one of Croydon’s most Labor wards, suggests he could be. Not because Mr. Barwell, a 43-year-old Croydonian, did not encounter Labor voters among its tatty Victorian terraces. There were many, with many grumbles, including about the National Health Service, benefit cuts and costly housing. Yet these troubles have little to do with austerity. In cash terms, local government expenditure has increased: it will be £79 billion ($117 billion) this year, up from £76 billion in 2010-11. In Croydon, fairly typically, there have been job losses—including, laments Tony Newman, leader of the council, to cherished road-safety staff, known as lollipop ladies.

But no library has closed and, in Woodhall and elsewhere, there are shiny new street lights. In 2010 the council spent £490m; this year it will spend £546m. Take the government’s welfare reforms into account, and demographic as well as regional losers emerge from Mr Osborne’s squeeze. Those of working age have been hardest hit, losing child and other benefits. That this has not met more resistance may be because younger Britons, unlike their more self-righteous elders, appear too resigned to protest; it was striking in Woodhall how almost all the non-voters were aged under 40.

And if Labor wins the election it will regret this, because, to spend more on the NHS, as it has promised to do, it will have to keep squeezing councils. “There will be no additional funding for local government unless we can find money from somewhere,” says Ed Balls, the shadow chancellor. “We have not been able to.” This means more pain for councils—but, if they are smart, perhaps rebirth. As they struggle to provide basic services, the government is offering them more incentives to encourage growth as well as efficiency.

In addition to business-tax retention, it has promised incentives for house-building and allowed them to collect more tax. And the most able can have much more autonomy: Greater Manchester, Mr. Osborne said in his budget speech, will retain all its business rates; Cambridge wants a similar deal. This could amount to an historic change, which would be a good return on a squeeze that most Britons have not terribly noticed.

MARCH 21ST–27TH 2015

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