Huge cuts to education, health and welfare budgets, higher class sizes, teachers losing their jobs, local government squeezed and public servants forced to take unpaid leave.
Is this the inevitable future for public services in the UK?
Quite possibly, if you believe the pundits. But it’s certainly the case in California, where governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has terminated a number of programmes and announced savage cuts aimed at closing the state’s $26.3bn deficit.
Of course, California is a long way across the pond and has a unique set of problems. However, the same response can also be seen much closer to home.
The Irish economy, famously described as the Celtic Tiger, can no longer roar; at best, it whimpers. As we report on page 13, the chair of Ireland’s cost-cutting panel, Colm McCarthy, has recommended budget cuts in excess of e5bn and more than 17,000 public sector job losses.
Britain’s response might not go as far as either California or Dublin, but pain cannot be avoided. This conclusion was even more apparent with the publication of June’s public finance figures, which showed government borrowing at its highest level since monthly records began in 1993.
Of course, there is more than one solution. As the National Institute of Economic and Social Research pointed out, there are other options beyond budget cuts, including higher taxes and longer working lives.
None of the three options is attractive. But using them together could mitigate overall pain levels and produce an outcome that doesn’t undermine the progress made in public services over the past 12 years.
It’s hardly an appealing election manifesto – cutting spending, raising taxes and forcing people to work into their seventies.
And yet selling this to the electorate might not be as difficult as one might think. An opinion poll this week suggested that the public realises budget cuts are inevitable. Moreover, when asked their preference, almost two-fifths of respondents favoured a split between tax rises and spending cuts.
Politicians will inevitably be sceptical. Prime Minister Gordon Brown commented at his monthly press conference that ‘it depends how you ask these questions’.
He has a point, but we could have reached the stage where there is a political dividend in honesty. It might be Brown’s only chance to emulate Arnie and declare: ‘I’ll be back.’
