The Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Right Honourable Philip
Hammond.
All right, here we go.
The era of austerity is finally coming to an end.
He said it.
The era of austerity is finally coming to an end.
So, the chancellor has doubled down
on the promise already made by the prime minister.
Now we'll have to see if the numbers add up
and do justice to that claim.
The end of austerity, let's see.
We will also harvest a double-deal dividend.
A boost from the end of uncertainty
and a boost from releasing some of the fiscal headroom
that I am holding in reserve at the moment.
We are confident that we will secure a deal which
delivers that dividend.
It's quite a clever, suddenly rhetorical device,
for a number of reasons.
It redeems, a bit, the language we
heard earlier from some of the hardcore Brexiters
about a Brexit dividend.
We know there isn't a Brexit dividend.
The economy will suffer from increasing the distance
with the main trading partner in the EU.
But the chancellor is right to say that if there is now
a proper deal, given that there's a lot of uncertainty
around that, that will make things better than they
would be without a deal.
In that sense, he kind of redeems the language,
and he can also say, it's really important
that the whole party, the whole Tory party,
plays along with what the prime minister and the chancellor
want.
So he says, if there is a deal, then of course they may not
need to spend the money he set aside for preparations
for a no-deal scenario.
And in the economy, because uncertainty
who will be reduced, you will probably
see new investment, new hiring, and higher growth rate
than what we currently expect.
So, this is both clever and it's important, both politically
and economically.
Borrowing this year will be £11.6bn lower than forecast
at the spring statement.
The chancellor has been given some other good news
from the Office of Budget Responsibility.
They now forecast borrowing to be almost £12bn billion less
this year that had been forecast as recently as the spring
statement, about half a year ago.
That's almost, just a little bit less
than what my colleague Chris Giles predicted last week
from the published numbers.
Chris usually gets it right.
But that's quite a lot of extra money for the chancellor
to play with.
The OBR confirmed that our national debt peaked in 2016-17
at 85.2 per cent of GDP, and then falls
in every year of the forecast.
Again, good news for the chancellor from the OBR.
Debt peaked two years ago - the debt to GDP ratio
- and it's falling, and it's going to be lower in each year
than what was previously forecast.
All of which is not really surprising or unexpected,
but it plays in very nicely into the narrative
of a Conservative government that's fiscally responsible.
Of course, they've been in office for a long time.
This is largely the cycle doing its work.
But it does really work for the message
they want to put across.
When our EU negotiations deliver a deal,
as I'm confident they will, I expect that the deal dividend
will allow us to provide further funding for the spending
review.
The hard work of the British people is paying off.
Here we see how it's all coming together
economically and politically.
So the chancellor has just said, this is great news
to be able to give as chancellor that he will now
start growing in real terms, the spending
on public services, departmental spending.
After, as we know, pretty much a decade of cuts.
And he's also linking this to resolving, or finally deciding
on the Brexit issue and agreeing a deal with the EU.
That will allow even more money to be
released for public services.
The subtext here, of course, is to the rest of the party
- don't scupper this.
Don't stop it, because it's only through getting this deal
that we will be able to also provide
the sort of public services that voters like.
Austerity is coming to an end, but discipline will remain,
and that is the clear dividing line in British politics today.
So the main message on which they are trying now
to fight against the opposition is
that austerity is coming to an end thanks
to what the Conservatives have done.
And this extra money that's coming, thanks to good news
on the economy, he's using to the best effect he can.
Some more money for quite a lot of different public services
that have experienced strong cuts,
but also something for traditional Conservative causes
like defence.
And finally, a commitment not to increase taxes, little tweaks
here and there, some cleaning up loopholes
that are very welcome.
But the chancellor is not accepting the advice
of many independent analysts that, in the future,
a solid provision of public services
will require somewhat higher tax levels.
Clearly not going down that route.
So that is a pretty traditional Conservative message
with a kind of compassionate conservatism added in, which
he can do with the extra good news on the economy
and the public finances.
So there is clearly the end of an era of ever deeper cuts.
Is it actually going to feel like the end of austerity
to enough voters next time they go to the polls?
That's still not quite clear.