The announcement of the UK Spending Review last week should have been one of the most significant fiscal events of this Labour government. It was to set out how government spending will evolve over the next five years. But more importantly for Northern Ireland, it was also expected to announce a new estimate of how our share of public funding would be decided.
In reality, the Spending Review on the day was somewhat underwhelming. There were no surprises and certainly no game-changers. While on the surface there appeared to be lots of announcements about new money for very big projects, the reality isn’t really all that positive.