The Conservatives' surprisingly comprehensive triumph, against all the pollsters' predictions of a long, drawn-out and messy hung parliament, will have significant implications for the functioning of government, not to mention the future of public services.
There are few children's services leaders who will see much to cheer about in the Tory manifesto pledge to slash £13bn from departmental budgets over the course of the next five years. This will almost certainly mean more financial pain for England's 152 local authorities, particularly for those children's services that are not ringfenced against cuts.
However, it was highly questionable whether Labour's plans to meet the Tories' austerity commitments while at the same time raising public spending through wealth taxes would have generated the kind of money to prevent cuts to local services on the ground.
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