Time is against Ed Miliband: there is a void where there should be a new shadow
chancellor. The party leadership cannot refine its arguments ahead of next month’s spending review, upon which the immediate success of Miliband’s regime depends. A further problem is that all of
Labour’s arguments are made in the past tense. The previous government’s economic record is defended with evangelical fervour; but each speaker is struck dumb when asked about specific
future savings and plans.
Alistair Darling closed his front-bench career this afternoon by saying, ‘The deficit is the result of the banking crisis – and the economic crisis that followed it. We had to take that action.’ No, the deficit was, is and ever shall be structural unless government spending is retrenched. Liam Byrne asserted that the economy was something of which every activist could be proud.
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