If the government had cut spending by as much as The Guardian has since 2010, public spending in 2016-17 would have been £450 billion. In reality it was £772 billion, a difference of £322 billion. It has come to something when The Guardian has introduced more austerity measures than Tory chancellors. Saving £322 billion would allow the government to abolish income tax, VAT, Fuel Duty*…

*Calculations by Alex Wild, who is the soon to be departing research director of the Taxpayers’ Alliance.

More taxes, more spending, more borrowing, slower deficit reduction, wobbling on tuition fees and ending the public sector pay cap – some members of the Cabinet are becoming Torbynistas. Jeremy Hunt has demanded the “1% cap for NHS workers” is lifted, Justine Greening wants the same for teachers. Now Boris is briefing out he “strongly” believes the public sector pay cap should go. The IFS says copying Jezza’s cap-ditching policy would cost £9.2 billion per year, at a time when the national debt stands at nearly £1.9 trillion…

The 1% cap figure is also very misleading. Many NHS workers and teachers get a salary rise each year additional to national pay. As former minister Rob Wilson points out, this isn’t widely known and is worth several hundreds of pounds a year to several thousand pounds a year depending on salary band. The 1% figure everyone uses isn’t the whole story, for many the real number is more like 4%.

This outlines how teachers get paid wage increases additional to national pay. Qualified teachers’ pay scales | Tes https://t.co/eQhabnPBJx

— Rob Wilson (@RobWilson_RDG) July 3, 2017

I will try to check what the actual rate of wage increase was last year in NHS. I think it was 4% from memory. https://t.co/ZbeZFn3vDT

— Rob Wilson (@RobWilson_RDG) July 3, 2017

As the IFS says, in the last ten years public sector pay has accelerated faster than the private sector. Indeed earlier this year the IFS reported public sector workers are still being paid hundreds of pounds a year more than their private sector counterparts, despite “austerity“. None of the Torbynistas calling for an “end to austerity” are talking about how they are going to pay for it. For Boris this could be the most expensive Tory leadership campaign in history…

The People’s Assembly Against Austerity march in London this afternoon was supposed to be the more presentable sequel to last month’s ‘Day of Rage’. Didn’t quite work out like that. Corbyn, McDonnell, Diane Abbott and Owen Jones addressed a crowd of communist flag waving cranks and demonstrators carrying placards calling the PM and her chief of staff “murderers“.

Imagine making these to go on a demo with and not wondering "Are we the baddies?" pic.twitter.com/0xjJj0luID

— Tom Hamilton (@thhamilton) July 1, 2017

This charming lady carried a placard showing Theresa May’s head impaled on a bloodied spike. She claimed to be a Labour Party member from New Forest Gate. Corbyn described the protesters as “the movement that will win the next election”.

Channel 4 News’ Cathy Newman was spotted in discussion with Paul Mason. Jon “F**k the Tories” Snow sitting this one out?

 A standard Saturday afternoon out for Jez…

There’s a renewed focus on the politics of ‘austerity’ in the wake of the election, with some senior Tories using the result to proclaim “austerity is over” and endorse even more borrowing, taxes and spending. This fiscal truth bullet is much needed: research from the TaxPayers’ Alliance shows that public spending is just 0.2% lower than in 2009-10. When you look at the actual numbers for 2016-17, it is clear ‘austerity’ never really happened…

• In 2016-17 public spending was a mere £1.3 billion lower than it was in 2009-10.
• Day-to-day public spending was £14.3 billion higher than it was in 2009-10. This is an increase of 2.1 per cent.
• Per household, public spending was £1,121 higher than it was in 2007-08: £28,529
• Spending on welfare for pensioners was 12.1 per cent higher than it was in 2009-10.
• In 2010-11 and 2015-16 there were real-terms budget increases for international development and health.

Some departments have faced more efficiencies than others, but overall the level of public spending has barely been touched since 2009. A reminder to the Gavin Barwells of the government not to take leave of their senses and embrace Labour’s fantasy economics – they will always be able to promise more free stuff…

Encouraged by her new chief of staff Gavin Barwell, Theresa May is aggressively pursuing the dangerous narrative that “austerity is over”. Barwell told Newsnight that he lost his seat because public sector workers in his constituency wanted a pay rise. May has apparently accepted this analysis and told Tory wets she will pursue Labour-lite economics to win back Corbyn voters. Hers was already the most economically left-wing Red Tory manifesto since the seventies and it was rejected by the public. By contrast David Cameron won a majority while Labour screamed about spending cuts. The Tories had a 24 point lead before the manifesto was released – it was the dementia tax and the student offer not austerity that lost them their majority. Ending austerity is the wrong inference from May’s failure…

The national debt is nearly £1.9 trillion. It grows at a rate of £5,170 per second. The debt burden is 86% of GDP, more than double what it was pre-2008. Public sector borrowing is £51.7 billion this year – that is government overspending by £1 billion a week. May’s manifesto already kicked the deficit reduction can down the road to 2025, ten years later than George Osborne’s original so-called austerity programme. Young voters chose Corbyn, now May wants to win them back by saddling them and future generations with even more debt.

The only Cabinet minister who so far seems to recognise the recklessness of all this is Michael Gove, who told the Today programme “we need to get on with the job of reducing the deficit so that we do not saddle the next generation with a burden of debt”. The trouble with the government’s “austerity is over” spin is the deficit and debt can’t be spun away. If the gilt market loses confidence interest rates shoot up, as inflation takes off wage demands will spiral and the UK’s own version of Chavez will be installed. CPI has hit a 2.9% high this morning, above expectations. Not a good signal to loosen the fiscal stance and abandon austerity…