Today’s argument with the Prison Officers, ending in a government court injunction forcing them back to work, is a symptom of a big storm brewing, which Hammond has to deal with in his long awaited Autumn Statement, in effect his first Budget. The problem, and it is big with multiple focus points, is that after years of austerity and seemingly endless cuts, public services of every sort and kind are beginning to creak and fail. All manner of initiatives in the name of efficiency are afoot, but if the truth be told, which it never is, the initiatives mostly cost more in extended bureaucracy than they save in operating costs.
The prisons are today’s news, usually it is the NHS or care for the elderly, but it can be anything through schools, policing, potholes, mental health; the list is endless and growing. Corbyn and Brexit are warnings but much worse will come if Hammond does not convincingly ease the pressure and find new money to plug gaps and reinvigorate the public services. Austerity has enabled the higher paid, especially the professional classes and the political establishment, to do rather well these last several years. But the pressure is now really bearing down upon the mass of the people, who have seen their standards fall and their hopes for the future retreat, in the course of a single generation. Everywhere you look there are signs of a big political shock in the making.
May talks endlessly in platitudes sounding not unlike stuff rolled out of Conservative Central Office in the nineteen fifties. But so far her government has done nothing but argue within itself. So, it all hinges on Hammond.
.