Spin it any way you like, but it remains the fact that people here are going to be poorer.
As the top economist at the Bank of England, Huw Pill, said: “There’s a reluctance to accept that, yes, we’re all worse off.” Here that means a lot worse off.
We’re hit by a substantial cut in the annual handout from Westminster on which the north depends completely. Some departments have been given what’s called a ‘flat’ allocation, but even if that’s the case, with inflation still running at 10 per cent, that’s a cut in real terms.
Those, like education, which disgracefully have had their budgets cut, will be down in excess of 12 per cent, others in the region of 15 per cent. Prices will continue to rise because, while Rishi Sunak has targeted getting inflation down, all that means is that prices rise at a slower rate, but they still rise.
Meanwhile, because of this rotten, talentless government’s ideology, the net effect is that public services across the board become worse in every respect – by design. We’ll come back to that.
On the other hand, in the south the government doesn’t know what to do with its surplus. Well, that’s not entirely true. What they’re trying to do is prioritise spending on various competing projects.
Just to fill in the picture for you, since the media here pay scant attention to anything south of the border, certainly nothing successful, the surplus this year is €10 billion. Next year it’s predicted to be €16 billion, with continuing surpluses until at least 2026 totalling €65 billion.
Needless to say there’s going to be a scramble by government departments demanding their share of the loot. The first shot in the bidding war will be fired at the National Economic Dialogue in June when employers, unions, charities, NGOs, all put their spoke in.
The result will not be known until the budget on October 10. Everyone agrees it will be a giveaway budget, possibly with major tax reductions and benefit rises – exactly the opposite of here.
Sure isn’t it brilliant to be manacled to a declining, medium-sized state with low productivity and high inflation? Ah, the benefits of the union, as Jeffrey ‘I could live with 40,000 job losses’ Donaldson will tell you.
It doesn’t all smell of roses in the south, however. There are other considerations the government will take into account. The main one is the terror of handing over the massive surplus to a Sinn Féin government in 2025 which will keep them in office for a decade, as happened with Bertie Ahern in 1997. Nevertheless, the government will be striving to improve people’s lives with a growing state and improving public services.
Once again, exactly the opposite ideology of this horrible, nasty Conservative government, reeking of cronyism and corruption, that the right-wing DUP so favours. After all, didn’t blowhard DUP MPs support Trump for president?
Isn’t it nauseating that the DUP, some of whose voters number among the most poorly educated males in Europe (thanks to DUP education policies), support policies which have eviscerated public services, reduced the size of the state, cut benefits, and favour the better off?
Our proconsul is and has been part of this rotten government, a man who struggled in vain to keep Johnson as prime minister and thought he could make a comeback. Now he has the easiest job in UK politics, enjoying bi-partisan support in Westminster from a useless opposition and no criticism from anyone here.
The parties here quibble about how big the cuts he imposed on public services are rather than challenging the whole basis of government funding here.
Do they not realise reducing public services here like education and health are part of his party ideology and they’re acquiescing instead of opposing?
Do they not know the guaranteed outcome of his ideology is what John Kenneth Galbraith identified: private wealth and public squalor?