Letter from the Associate Editor: This Budget’s dirty little secret gives us all a clear choice

For those of us of a certain age, the Chancellor really cannot be more helpful. Cash in your pension pot to spend as you wish? Be my guest, says George Osborne. Abolish the tax on your savings (as revealed in i’s scoop yesterday)? Coming right up. A more flexible ISA? Yessir. Never forget that older voters are more likely to vote.

There were also some other politically astute moves, aimed with precision at first-time buyers, struggling high street shops, motorists, boozers, air ambulances and local newspapers (a very worthy cause, we have to say). All very generous – apparently.

Yet behind all those gifts lurks the Budget’s dirty little secret, revealed by Ed Miliband in a strong Commons performance – that the Government plans extreme cuts to public services over the next five years, at least as deep as those experienced since 2010. That means poorer public services, yet more cuts to benefits, hitting the poorest hardest, and a more divided society. By the time we get to the 2020s, we might well have the most unequal Britain since the 1920s.

The good news, and it’s not to be discounted, is that Mr Osborne and Mr Miliband have at least highlighted the choice for the voters at the election. There are plenty of other contenders – SNP, Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru, the Unionists, Greens, Ukip and others – but of the two parties that will form (most of) a UK government there is an important decision ahead. Politics, in other words, still matters – and so will your vote.

i@independent.co.uk