The issue of cuts is clouded by different meanings given to the word by different people. To the political class it means one thing and to others it means something else. Politicians think that something is a cut if a rate of increase is reduced even though their cut still leaves an increase.

If a non-politician had been increasing their weekly intake of doughnuts by two extra doughnuts per week they might, when their intake reached twenty doughnuts per week think about reducing their intake. If this hypothetical non-politician followed the week of twenty doughnuts with a week with nineteen of them, he would consider that his intake had been reduced or cut.

For the politician this would be more than a cut, he could follow his week of twenty doughnuts with a week with twenty-one doughnuts and he would still claim to have cut his intake. His logic would be that with his normal rate of increase, he would have had twenty-two doughnuts but as he was only having twenty-one, he had cut down.

This is what is happening with the economy at the moment. The Tories are only tinkering with the problem. If they were serious about reducing our debt, they would leave the EU. Savings just on our annual membership fee would have an impact on the budget deficit and the saving the 4% of GDP from EU regulation would wipe out the deficit and make a start on paying back the National Debt of £4.8 trillion (including future pension obligations).

Dumping the EU would not solve all our problems but it would free us from a very substantial part of our crippling debt interest payments, enabling us to have well-funded libraries, etc.