Public services desperately need investment. But Brexit is all-consuming | Patrick Butler

Philip Hammond may announce today that austerity will soon be over, but then what? It was the Tories' one clear strategy

The 20bn public services bung reportedly dangled before MPs by the chancellor Philip Hammond before this week's spring statement, in an attempt to persuade them to vote for Theresa May's Brexit deal, will not surprise anyone who believes the main cause of disintegrating public services is lack of ministerial will to invest, rather than lack of money.

Like May's desperate 1.6bn bribe for the leave-voting "left-behind" northern England towns, it tells us not so much that Hammond believes a weary, austerity-battered UK deserves a new era of public services settlement, but that resources can always be found when the future of the Conservative party is at stake.

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