Labour's cuts really would be less deep than the Conservatives'

Fleet Street’s top cartoonists have a similar view on Ed Miliband’s deficit reduction plans.

Here’s Dave Brown in the Indy:

Here’s Peter Brookes’ cartoon in The Times:

And here’s Steve Bell in the Guardian:

What the draftsmen have in common is that they take a somewhat sceptical view of that idea that austerity would be less painful under a Labour government.

It’s a meme one picks up a lot in the Fleet Street commentary: “Whoever forms the next Government is going to have to impose massive cuts” etc.

But, actually, the conventional wisdom is wrong.

In a new report the Institute for Fiscal Studies has broken down the size of the cuts required by the parties under their announced deficit reduction plans.

There is lots of detail on what those plans are in the paper. But here’s the bottom line:

As this makes clear the Coalition’s penciled-in plans entail considerably more austerity than under the Labour or the Lib Dems (or even than under the Conservatives’ own targets for that matter – although given George Osborne is writing the Coalition’s plans we can probably ignore that anomaly).

The Coalition plans imply austerity worth more than 5% of GDP. Labour’s plans imply a consolidation worth 3% of GDP. Almost double the size as a share of national income.

Notice, also, that the Conservatives have a much bigger “unspecified” blank space to be filled with new austerity policies than Labour or the Lib Dems – something to think about when Cameron and Osborne next try to challenge Labour for its lack of “credibility” on policies to reduce the deficit:

Also, here’s the implications for day-to-day departmental spending in cash terms of the parties’ targets (which I’ve produced using IFS calculations in the report):

As is clear, the Coalition has penciled in Whitehall austerity which is 7.5 times larger than under Labour’s plans.

Those axes are not just different colours – they’re different sizes too.