Autumn statement: As reality bites, revulsion could yet sink Osborne and Cameron | Polly Toynbee

The chancellor should be careful. The claim that savage cuts are essential to address the deficit is wearing thin

We are about to learn what a shrunken Britain will feel like. By 2020 a state reduced to barely 36% of GDP will be another country, a world away from the land we have only recently been living in. Tomorrow in his autumn statement the chancellor will lay out all the things we shall have less of, one by one. This is not emergency belt-tightening, a temporary sacrifice. It is the permanent shape of things to come, as David Cameron said from the start.

There is no light at the end of this tunnel, on a journey without purpose to a promised land offering nothing beyond doing less for less. Where's the vision to make it all worthwhile? Their early claim said that once the Stalinist state was hacked down, it could no longer "crowd out" the effervescent spirit of private enterprise: graphene was usually mentioned here, though as with the internet and most great technical leaps, that too sprang from state-backed university research.

Related: Everything we hold dear is being cut to the bone. Weep for our country | Will Hutton

Related: Cameron accused of hypocrisy over letter complaining of cuts

This is high-wire politics without a safety net. How lucky do Cameron and Osborne feel?

Related: Relentless cuts won't help Britain's long-term economic prospects | Letters