There haven't been any net public spending cuts – but try to say so and you'll be howled down as a liar

Telegraph
"Still, as I say, the story is now past correction. Denying the scale of the reductions – ie, quoting the actual statistics – is so jarring that, not only do you fail to convince, you damage your credibility across the board. It’s like claiming that Margaret Thatcher raised spending on the NHS: it might be statistically accurate but, to eighty per cent of your listeners, it establishes you as a liar.

What the government means by “cuts” is, in fact, what Thatch meant: that public spending will shrink as a proportion of GDP. In other words, the state sector will grow, but the private sector will grow faster. Since the former is funded by the latter, this surely makes sense.

Yet so embedded is the idea that there has been an absolute reduction in state spending that a narrative is now forming to the effect that the economic slowdown is being caused by “the cuts”. What cuts, for Heaven’s sake?"