At the moment, the UK Chancellor is getting headlines with her tough talk on government spending and her promise to keep an “iron grip on the public finances”, which she defined as “taking an iron fist against waste”. Okay. This tough guy talk (guy being generic) seems to be the flavour of the month with the incoming US administration also talking about creating a Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to hack into public sector spending and employment. Once again we see a Labour government consorting with the ideas of the conservatives. And extreme conservatives nonetheless. The British Chancellor has also determined that public officials are incapable of understanding the priorities and means to provide public services and is going to force the department officials to appear before a so-called ‘independent committee’ of bankers and other financial market types who will scrutinise the financial plans with the aim of cutting 15 per cent over three years from each department’s budget. Another example of conforming to neoliberal ideology. The problem with all this talk, which generalises into public discussions about government spending, is that there is an implicit assumption that it is dysfunctional and just goes up in smoke (waste) somewhere. I never hear these politicians acknowledge that if they actually succeed in making these cuts then a spending gap will emerge and that gap has to be filled in some way or the economy moves towards recession. In other words, what a person might deem to be wasteful expenditure, will always be underpinning GDP and employment growth. Clear up the ‘waste’ and there are additional consequences that may not be considered desirable. At least these politicians and their advisors should make that clear to the public.