More Labour Cuts

The ever more impressive Fraser Nelson in The Spectator demolishes Alistair Darling's Pre Budget Report and includes a couple of killer passages (my emphasis):

"To see just how far the game has changed, consider the response last week when Mr Cameron declared Labour’s 2010/11 spending levels unaffordable. Then, he was denounced as a Thatcherite ideologue by Labour and as ‘mad’ by some economic commentators. Yet on Monday, Mr Darling did precisely the same, cutting his own projected spending for the next two years by some £35 billion. By coincidence, this is precisely the sum he accused Michael Howard of planning to cut three years ago. Then, Mr Darling declared such a saving ‘could only be found from cutting deep into front-line public services, including schools, hospitals and the police’. Now he calls it ‘efficiency’."

"Every couple of decades, a financial disaster comes along which destroys a government’s reputation. For Jim Callaghan it came in 1976 when he asked the IMF for a £2.3 billion bail-out. John Major had his in 1992 with Black Wednesday, which cost £3.4 billion. If we take the almost comically optimistic assumptions of the Pre-Budget Report, Britain is now heading for £1,080 billion of national debt. This is the price of the collapse of New Labour. And this debt, rather than a New Jerusalem, will be Mr Brown’s legacy."