As Philip Hammond puts the finishing touches to his conference speech he may want to consider a total rewrite. Boring Phil needs to talk to the nation, not his party. It is time for the most senior one-nation Tory (Theresa May is a pretender to this crown) to be a bit more statesmanlike and think about people beyond the audience.

That doesn’t look likely though. His announcement last week of an autumn budget (on 29 October), suggested he plans to stick to offering a “balanced approach” to debt “while supporting vital public services, and building a stronger, more prosperous economy”.

He uses these phrases almost every time he emerges from the Treasury. And indications are that audiences at this week’s Tory conference can expect more of the same, with extra Brexit spice and a twist of global uncertainty.

That means he will tell the crowd inside Birmingham’s conference centre that his balanced approach will be applied even more conservatively now it is clear the disastrous prospect of a no-deal Brexit could coincide with a trade tariff war.

How, he will ask, can he spend more money when he may need to draw on every bit of our reserves in just six months? It would be irresponsible to spend now, when Britain and the world economy are entering an uncertain phase.

That’s just a fraud. The government is pursuing anything but a balanced approach. Things are already falling apart and the next four years will be even rougher than the past eight as he puts deficit reduction ahead of protecting public services and supporting vulnerable families.

As for building a stronger economy, Hammond has set aside some money for transport infrastructure, but precious little Treasury cash for anything new or innovative.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has produced a string of disturbing reports showing that a slowdown in GDP growth since 2016 – most of which can be attributed to the referendum vote – will leave workers facing an unprecedented second decade of weak earnings growth and more years of austerity.

At the last budget, when the Office for Budget Responsibility said it had lost faith in Britain’s ability to generate strong productivity growth, and with it inflation-busting wage rises, the IFS warned that average earnings were on course to be £1,400 a year lower in 2021 than had been forecast in 2016. In addition, borrowing was likely to be £12bn higher in 2021 than previously predicted.

If you thought a cold wind blew through public services between 2008 and 2018, prepare for a permanent winter for the next 10 years.

With 50% of families that live in poverty found to have a disabled adult or disabled child in their household, Britons should see that the common weal, the promise to look after those who find themselves struggling financially through no fault of their own, is broken.

Today the Observer reveals that the cost of lost growth, mediocre wage rises and lower tax receipts since the referendum vote is £26bn and counting, much worse than previously estimated.

Hammond knows that the fabric of public services is fraying and people are not receiving even a basic level of support they deserve. Schools are the latest to shred their budgets to retain staff; most other public service providers have already cut themselves to the bone.

Hammond is an honourable, one-nation Tory who stood with May when she said that just-about-managing families deserved more support. He wants to help, say his Treasury colleagues. It’s just that the loss of economic activity already incurred and the losses to come have boxed him in and mean he must keep his financial powder dry. He would, they say, raise taxes on us all to fund better public services. He’d even tax the rich more than the poor, but his own party, Jacob Rees-Mogg in particular, won’t wear it.

Inaction, though, would be the coward’s way out. It would be much more statesmanlike to ditch his fiscal rules and maintain a 2% budget deficit. With the OECD expecting nominal GDP growth to fall from 3.8% in 2017 to 3.2% in 2019, the overall debt-to-GDP ratio will fall. It’s just that the annual deficit won’t reach zero by the middle of the next decade, as he has promised.

The Resolution Foundation calculates that on current projections, he could free up £77bn by 2022 to spend on welfare and services. It might disappoint the IMF, which has decided to repeat the same mistakes that it made after the financial crash by insisting on manic deficit-reduction-linked austerity, but on this subject it is discredited.

Hammond, for the sake of our democracy, must argue the case for a more caring government, Brexit or no Brexit.