The comprehensive spending review fleeces the middle classes… The comprehensive spending review will hit the poorest hardest… The comprehensive spending review is a reckless gamble that risks a double dip recession… The comprehensive spending review will create jobs and growth.

There are about as many takes on the CSR as there are commentators. The fact that most analyses are mutually contradictory is testament to how complicated it is. The Sun presented a recondite perspective that got right to the heart of it: “Axes all areas”, was the headline on the morning after the night before.

As the collected ranks of commentators continue to ruminate about what the long term effects of the CSR will be, here are a few initial observations.

First, it is a harsh medicine – the fiscal equivalent of electric shock therapy. A statement of the very obvious and entirely in line with expectations, but it needs to be said. The coalition line that it only takes spending down to 2006 levels – which is true – has given the impression that it’s not all that bad. ‘A shower, not a hurricane’, as one publication from the Centre for Policy Studies put it. But those who make this argument usually omit to mention several other important points – for instance, levels of total government consumption in the economy will drop to around 18% (equivalent to the levels of the early 1970s and a massive and rapid rebalancing of the economy). Consider also that there has been a 53% increase in spending over the last ten years (bank bailout plus genuine investment in public services) and that in only four years since 1967 have real terms annual declines in public spending been achieved. The coalition is proposing to achieve three in a row. Necessary or otherwise, the measures will cause significant pain.

Second, the CSR was highly political in nature. Consider the way in which it passed on many of the painful service related decisions to local authorities while cutting their budget as well as maintaining a freeze on council tax, making a virtue of ‘greater freedom’ for councils out of a 28% core funding budget cut. It’s also hard to ignore the way in which, after the strong public reaction against cuts to middle class benefits, the government have chosen not to reduce the child benefit threshold from nineteen to sixteen years old but the Educational Maintenance Allowance of poorer students will be scrapped. So, in spite of pressure from right and left and their own PR claims, the CSR did not in the main target universal benefits but those drawn by the poorest. The Institute of Fiscal Studies’ judgement of the welfare package is that it rebalances resources away from children and towards pensioners. This may be a cynical judgement, but it seems as if the Chancellor has worked hard to shield his Party’s political base from the worst of the cuts, while the less-likely-to-kick-up-a-fuss young and long term unemployed, have borne the brunt of the welfare reductions.

Third, and contrary to some commentary, the CSR is neither bold nor visionary. In Philip Blond’s words, it makes ‘orthodox’ cuts – similar to previous attempts to rein in public spending – while doing nothing to resolve the inherent pressures for public spending growth in the system (with the arguable exception of Iain Duncan Smith’s Universal Credit – yet to be defined). These cuts will be subject to the same restraints as all other attempts to rein back on public spending. If, for instance, the private sector does not grow at the anticipated rate, then the welfare bills will be subject to severe upward pressure (and again, the public interest is hostage to the fortunes of the market). Yet there’s nothing that will help the economically least resilient areas get off the life support machine of public spending. So the CSR will squeeze the public sector pay roll and welfare spending, but won’t tackle the problems that lie behind those areas of inflated spending.

Neither did the CSR do anything to resolve the biggest long term problem for public spending – the NHS (which needs an annual 3% above inflation budget rise just to stand still). By 2015, the NHS may account for around one in every three pounds spent by the government. Again, perhaps for the sake of political expediency (he is a politician after all), Osborne balked at the key public spending challenge of the next twenty years.

As ever, the Coalition’s ‘new politics’ looks very much like old politics. No-one would question the fact that the deficit represented an incredibly difficult challenge for the incoming government – a fiscal crisis in fact – or claim that there was a substantially different package on the table for the Labour Party. But to paraphrase Rahm Emanuel, a good crisis has been wasted. There’s no narrative behind the CSR, no fundamental reconsideration of the role of the state in economically straitened times, no reflection on what the good society looks like. Just less of the same.

Paul Bickley is Senior Researcher at Theos.