The poor don't need austerity. And neither does Britain

Alas! Were it not for the fact that he was cremated, the great economist John Maynard Keynes would have been turning in his grave at the way the economics of last week's spring budget - sorry, spring statement - were greeted by most of the media.

- William Keegan

Of course, the principal culprit was the chancellor of the exchequer, Rachel Reeves. By tying herself to the mast of self-imposed fiscal rules, she managed to ensure that much of the commentary was about how she might have to raise taxes later this year, when the constraints of the fiscal straitjacket might force her to.

In the run-up to this fiscal "event", the speculation was about whether she would have to cut public spending or raise taxes in order to balance the books. At which point I should like to draw to her attention, and to the attention of those analysts who go on about this putatively "difficult" choice, the words of a past senior Treasury civil servant, the redoubtable Sir Douglas Allen (later Lord Croham).

"What matters," Allen once said in an interview with the historian Peter Hennessy and me, "is at what level of economic activity you balance the books".

With the British economy close to stagnation, this is the very last point at which a chancellor should even be contemplating "balancing the books" by cutting demand, let alone doing it in a way that rightly offends so many people who voted Labour with such high expectations - by penalising disabled people. The main theme of this budget was inhumane and economically wrong.