Last orders in the last chance saloon?

It’s the set of headlines which Labour must have dreaded after their recent progress in the polls.  The Times: “The axeman dithereth … but the taxman cometh”.  The Guardian: “Darling soaks the rich … and the rest of us too”.  The Mail: “The Buck Passer’s Budget”.  And so on and so on.  It doesn’t look too good inside the papers either.  The FT rails against a  “lack of clarity on public spending plans”, while the Independent says that “rarely has a pre-Budget report promised so much and delivered so little”.  The Sun’s opposition may not be too surprising, but it’s there in bucketfuls: “Britain is staring into the abyss. After yesterday’s performance that abyss has got deeper.”  Only the Mirror beats the drum for Labour, arguing that the Tories would have turned the recession into a “Great Depression”.

There’s every chance that the government will have to endure a turbulent couple of weeks before Christmas.