What is really going on in politics? Get our daily email briefing straight to your inbox Sign up Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Invalid Email

After seven years of Tory ­austerity, we’re heading for two decades of poor pay.

Remember when the Tories said that after Labour there was no money left? Well, take a look at your pay packet.

By 2022, average earnings will be £1,000 lower than earlier forecasts. And it’s the poorest taking the hit, missing out on £715 a year, while the richest gain £185.

The Tories gave us nothing in this week’s budget . Nothing for nurses, who have had a 14 per cent real-term wage cut since 2010.

Nothing for our police, who have to tackle rising crime with 20,000 fewer officers. And nothing for teachers and schools, facing the first real funding cuts since the mid-Nineties.

Instead the budget will further reduce the standards of living in Britain to the level of the Eighties .

Austerity was David Cameron’s and George Osborne’s big con trick – a way to slash budgets for public services and councils so they could give £60billion in tax breaks to their mates running big businesses.

They blamed the 2008 global financial crisis on Gordon Brown and Labour. They claimed we’d spent too much and austerity would restore the economy.

(Image: Getty Images Europe)

The Tories promised to eradicate the deficit by 2015, then 2016, then 2017, then 2020. Now it looks like it won’t be until 2030 at the earliest.

But nothing exposes how useless this Tory government has been more than housing.

The Tories have produced 11 government housing statements and two White Papers – proposed government plans – in their seven years in power. The last White Paper promised to mend the housing market.

But they bloody broke it!

Rough sleeping has doubled, home ownership has decreased to a 30-year low and they have built the lowest amount of social housing on record.

Thanks to Thatcher’s Right to Buy – which saw YOU ­subsidising people to buy their council homes – we have two million fewer social houses and 1.2 million families waiting to be housed.

Thanks to Osborne’s Help to Buy, YOU subsidise people’s deposits to buy homes costing up to £650,000.

And thanks to Philip Hammond, you’re subsidising a £3.2billion Stamp Duty giveaway to people buying homes for up to £300,000, up from £125,000. So who benefits?

The average house price in the North East is £132,999. In London, it’s £488,729 and in the South East it’s £320,905. Yet again, it’s a budget for the South not the North.

Tory housing policies have always been about the cash-strapped many paying for the lucky few. Even the independent Office for Budget Responsibility says it will actually increase house prices and benefit homeowners selling properties rather than first-time buyers.

That £3.2billion Stamp Duty cut over six years could have built more than 30,000 new council homes.

Instead it’ll end up in the back pockets of house sellers, estate agents and property developers.

In fact it’s been suggested by the OBR that it will help only 3,500 first-time buyers a year. It would be cheaper just to buy them houses!

But the Tories are right on one thing. Housing is the big domestic issue of our times. Labour can seize the initiative. Force developers to “use it or lose it” if they don’t develop land with planning per-mission within a set time.

Give money to local authorities to build council homes and spend the receipts from those sold off.

And cut out the spivvy property developers by using public-owned brownfield sites to build off-site manufactured houses that can be assembled in days, not months.

The party that solves the housing crisis gets the keys to Number 10.