It’s days like this when you realise just how stuck Labour are in a Brownite
groove. Everywhere you turn, there’s some leadership candidate or other attacking the government for choosing to cut public spending this year. Ed Miliband claims that the Lib Dems have been “completely macho …
completely cavalier” about cuts. Andy Burnham says that this year could
“damage us in the long run”. And even those who aren’t chasing the leadership are getting in on the act: Alistair Darling writes that the coalition has “a fiscal policy that undermines fragile growth”.
So we already know what Labour’s broad response to this week’s Budget will look like. But it got me a-wondering: what will their response to next year’s Budget be? This may sound like idle speculation for a Sunday evening, but the potential is certainly there for Labour to struggle in twelve month’s time.
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