Brexit has forced more needless austerity on Britain – Philip Hammond's ‘deal dividend’ is a pathetic sham

The chancellor pointed to the lengthy period of economic growth Britain has enjoyed under Tory rule, but that growth has slowed to a virtual crawl. Worse still it hasn’t been shared

If you lot can just agree something, it’s going to be great because there’ll be a super duper shiny deal dividend!

So said chancellor Philip Hammond, delivering his spring statement, the “mini budget” we used to get in the autumn.

It would have been big political story of the day but for the fact that his fellow Tories have set themselves the task of ripping the country to pieces. It’s about the only thing they’re doing well at the moment.

The chancellor wanted MPs from all parties to know that if they just either back his boss’s dismal deal when it comes back for the third, fourth or fifth time, or alternatively find a unicorn at the top of the magic faraway tree (while ignoring the obvious solution of a Final Say referendum) everything will be great.

Nearly every respectable economist you’d care to mention agrees with him too. They also think a deal will deliver an immediate shot in the arm for UK plc, and thus the exchequer, as its long suffering business community breathes a sigh of relief and opens the floodgates.

But it’s the characterisation of this as a “deal dividend”, a celebratory bonus boost, that is problematic. It represents a bitter lie on the part of the chancellor, one that rivals some of the ugly falsehoods spun by his Brexiteer colleagues.

Had David Cameron not raised the curtain on what can only be described as one of Britain’s all time sh*tshows, that money would be working, circulating around the economy, and growing, right now. We would have been doing it for the past three years.

The Office for Budgetary Responsibility’s all important forecasts might have looked better too. Perhaps it wouldn’t have had to downgrade them like it seems to do every time the chancellor gets up for one of these set pieces.

That point was highlighted by Hammond’s shadow, John McDonnell, in what was an otherwise curiously lifeless response, devoid of his usual fire.

There would have been more funds available for, say, the police, to tackle things such as knife crime. By the way, the ring fenced £100m extra promised to them to address the issue covers only overtime.

The chancellor rightly pointed out that training new officers takes time. But that process might have been underway by now had we not endured the desperate drama the Conservative Party has inflicted on us.

Instead, what we have been given is an economy languishing in the slow lane as the problems caused by the austerity that played such an important role in fermenting the Brexit mess continue to fester.

There are so many of them it’s hard to know where to start.

Apparently we now are on a road out of strangulation inflicted on the public services over the last decade, but it’s one of those bumpy country highway’s you daren’t drive at more than 20 miles an hour down for fear of busting up your suspension or hitting something coming in the other direction.

As for what the chancellor is promising to do with his fallacious deal “dividend”, it’s woefully unambitious.

School heads are still going to be cleaning toilets, criminals who don’t use knives will continue waking up to the fact that they have a free rein, investment will increase but remain low by OECD standards, the social care system will continue to teeter on the brink of collapse, parks and libraries will carry on closing.

The chancellor pointed to the lengthy period of economic growth Britain has enjoyed under Tory rule, and on his watch, but that growth has slowed to a virtual crawl. Worse still it hasn’t been shared.

And then there’s the NHS. It’s going to get some extra cash, but there’s no £350m a week. That was also talked about as a dividend by leave campaigners, some of whom are in the cabinet, one of whom (I hardly need to spell it out) is so desperate to sit at the head of it that he’ll say virtually anything to further his ends in his newspaper column(s).

More bitter lies. They’re piling up. If UK plc had a pound for every one uttered it’d be the tiger economy of the world.