The chancellor announced £11.5bn in public spending cuts for 2015-16 today, topping up the 2010 comprehensive spending review, which, it seems, wasn’t quite comprehensive enough.

We’re here, lest we forget, because the economy hasn’t grown as fast as expected, and the deficit is proving tricky to pay off. George Osborne’s latest swings with the axe will, he said today, help “secure the recovery” as Britain moves “out of intensive care” – though they won’t kick in until just before the next election.

“With this statement we make more progress towards an economy that prospers, a state we can afford, a deficit coming down, and a Britain on the rise,” Osborne said.

Alongside measures to scrap automatic public-sector pay rises and a cap on total welfare spending, the chancellor has demanded further belt tightening from government departments. One of the hardest hit – as it was last time around – is Defra, which must cut 10% from its budget in 2015-16. This is on top of the 24% total expenditure cut demanded over four years in the last spending review. Meanwhile, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills will suffer a 6% budget cut. Details of where these cuts will fall are yet to be released.

The Commons benches performed to expectations, with the usual cacophony of jeers and heckles on both sides. It’s almost as if the running of the country and people’s living standards – not to mention, in the case of the 144,000 people expected to leave the civil service by 2016, livelihoods – were not at stake.

Labour’s Ed Balls added painfully scripted gags to the general jollity. “His friends call him George, the president calls him Jeffrey – but to everyone else he’s just Bungle,” he said, before accusing the chancellor of failing on living standards and delivering “more of the same”.

It’s tempting to see the battles around future public spending by a yet-to-be-elected government as of little concern to anyone outside Westminster, especially since the MPs themselves seemed to think the whole thing was a bit of a lark.

But today’s message was stark, if not new: economically speaking, things aren’t going to get any better just yet. And the continuing squeeze on living standards presents a troubling challenge for everyone. We can expect another few years of people cutting back on the weekly shop, being more mercenary in their shopping allegiances, and generally feeling insecure – with all the attendant, unpredictable, effects this will have on retailers’ bottom lines. More of the same, indeed.

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