Pre-Budget Report: move over, Darling

Catching up on the PBR this evening: via The Evening Standard, BBC News 24 and others. Alistair Darling has the haunted look of a man who doesn't even believe his own propaganda any more. The Commons fell about laughing when he said that Britain was approaching these garganutan problems from....'a position of strength'. You gotta hand it to the guy, he kept a straight face while he said it.

I couldn't help noticing that a lot of the nasty stuff won't take effect until 2011 - ie after the next election. By then either the Conservatives will be lumbered with the consequences of it, or Labour will have squeezed home and the voters won't be able to do much about it.



We are up to our eyeballs in debt. Up to our temples. The upper reaches of our craniums. The levels are astronomical, unseen since people were queueing at the grocers with their ration books in the 1940s. It's the highest level of debt in the OECD. It's not the only problem, of course; output is continuing to fall (by more than the Chancellor predicted, of course) consumer spending is falling and unemployment, which has the greatest time lag in recession, will probably continue to rise. Labour have presided over the kind of mess that only happens, historically, once a century. No amount of spin will let the pirouette out of that.



If Darling was a little more serious about Britain's problems, he could have imposed much tougher treatment, as Ireland has done. They have similar problems, but their solution has been far more draconian: slashing public sector spending across the board, with no 'ring-fencing' of certain budgets and serious tax increases that leave no-one in any doubt that it's serious and the medicine will be very bitter indeed.