How much does it cost to "end austerity"? At least £31bn a year is the answer from @MattWhittakerRF in @resfoundation's pre-Budget report out today resolutionfoundation.org/publications/t…
On current plans austerity is set to persist - with day to day spending on public services falling right out to 2022-23 once we look at spend/person or in terms of keeping up with GDP 
The actual cuts needed would be bigger given promises to protect health and international aid - a 4.2% overall cut between 2019-20 and 2022-23 implies a 15.5% cut for unprotected areas
So the Chancellor needs to find £26bn to avoid departments seeing real cuts in public service spending per person
Ending austerity for just about managing families would also mean drawing to a close big social security cuts - it would cost £5bn to reverse the cuts to Universal Credit that have meant it has more losers (3.2m) than winners and cancel the last year of the benefit freeze
The good news for the CX trying to deal with these big bills is the @OBR_UK is set to tell him borrowing is coming in much (£13bn) lower than expected
This could give him nearly £40bn headroom against his fiscal mandate of borrowing 2% of GDP (the govt seems to have largely abandoned the idea of running a surplus by the middle of the 2020s). But...
...if the Chancellor borrows a lot to ease/end austerity debt will not be falling in any meaningful way. So:
1) It isnt easy but govt could end austerity
2) But doing so and delivering the objectives of the PM to also cut debt = tax rises needed (or some decent growth....)
1) It isnt easy but govt could end austerity
2) But doing so and delivering the objectives of the PM to also cut debt = tax rises needed (or some decent growth....)
Full report: resolutionfoundation.org/publications/t…
