THIS government has allowed the deaths of tens of thousands of our own citizens and its complete failure to handle the pandemic has also led to an unprecedented economic slump.

What we have seen this week is that the Tories also intend that it will be ordinary workers and the poor who will pick up the tab for their own failings.

Following on from the austerity of the Tory-led coalition, whose key measures have never been undone, we are now faced with another reduction in pay, cuts to public services and cuts to pensions.

Future tax increases, which will not mainly be on big business and the rich, are also publicly being discussed.

Along with the huge death toll, which has disproportionately hit poorer areas, disabled people and black and Asian communities, the government has allowed a huge social crisis to develop.

This includes increasing unemployment and poverty, as well as the despicable treatment of young people.

They face the appalling prospects of chasing non-existent jobs or endless rounds of zero-hours working.

Their alternative is hardly less appealing, being forced back to universities with the false demand that they must be involved in face-to-face teaching which is too dangerous to conduct, simply in order to extract fees and rents from them.

I am delighted that students at the University of Manchester have won a reduction in their rents.

In addition, the scandal in the care homes is a stain on this government which deserves to be politically indelible for generations.

Now this is all followed by an attack on ordinary workers. Even the Tory press could not muster the usual fanfare and spin regarding the Spending Review from the Chancellor Rishi Sunak — it was left to the BBC to step in with foolish talk of “maxing out the credit card.”

In fact, there are only two significant cuts announced in the spending statement. The first was the freeze in public-sector workers’ pay — after inflation this will be a cut in real terms. The second was the despicable cut to the international aid budget.

These are linked, in the sense that those who did not cause this economic crisis and who are among those least able to cope will be the first to suffer Tory cuts.

But they will not be the last. The Chancellor said that the economic crisis is only beginning.

Well, with these Tory policies that is quite likely. The number-crunching from the Institute for Fiscal Studies shows that the future year’s spending on public services announced in the statement will be lower than promised in the March Budget.

The austerity drive against public services has already begun and the poorest and most vulnerable will be hit hardest.

The key issue is that this all arises because the Tories have failed to combat the economic crisis and now expect GDP to fall by a disastrous 11.3 per cent and unemployment to rise to 7.5 per cent. Worse, they now demand that most public-sector workers pay for this mess with a pay freeze.

This government has never accepted that there is no trade-off between saving lives and saving livelihoods. The Tory attempt to “protect the economy” is a bit like the way they have “protected” the NHS. Their cronyism suggests something more like a protection racket.

They have led us to economic disaster and a public health disaster. Other countries, who took tough measures to combat the virus and short-term economic pain are now looking at economic recovery. Thanks to this government’s policies we will have the worst recession for over 300 years as well as one of the worst death tolls in the world.

The government is now talking about keeping its tiers policy until Easter, after a brief hiatus in the Christmas holiday period. This is much longer and much more damaging than those other countries’ successful lockdowns — and the death toll here continues to mount.

This disastrous economic outcome is a product of the government’s mishandling of every aspect of the pandemic and in turn it is responsible for the new crisis of public finances. Downing Street is the culprit, just as the banks were in 2008.

When Cameron, Osborne and the Lib Dems said that cuts to public-sector pay and pensions were necessary to reduce the deficit that was not true. Their overall policy included huge tax cuts for the big corporations and the highest earners. This was Robin Hood in reverse. In reality, the latest attack is the same.

The supposed saving from cutting public-sector pay is a minuscule fraction of the projected deficit of £394 billion in the current year. Ministers claim that the deficit and the debt are both mountainous, but have chosen a pen knife to tackle them.

The truth about the policy of wage cuts is revealed when we recall that they are simultaneously wasting extra tens of billions on military spending, while ordinary people once again face austerity.

If unemployment does rise sharply — and the Office of Budget Responsibility does not rule out a rise in the unemployment rate to 11 per cent — and the wages of millions of are cut in real terms and public services are once again decimated, this would represent a huge setback for all workers and all those who rely on public services.

Thatcher’s attack was through de-industrialisation and mass unemployment. The Conservative-Lib Dem coalition attempted it through cuts in real pay and in funding for public services. The result in both cases was misery for millions of people. This Tory government is attempting all of these and deserves to be strongly resisted.

Diane Abbott is MP for Hackney North.