This is good. As well as castigating Labour’s dereliction of duty and party politicking it also condemns Darling personally as being irredeemably weak and Brown as domineering and without principle.
He also gives Osborne a well-deserved pat on the back. Glad to see him recognised. Cometh the hour - - cometh the man. Can there be any doubt which way one's vote must go?
Christina
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DAILY MAIL 10.12.09
History will be withering about Darling's abject dereliction of duty
By PETER OBORNE
Alistair Darling faced the choice between doing the right thing for Britain and doing the right thing for the Labour Party. To his discredit, he chose to do the wrong thing for Britain and the right thing for Labour.
When he sat down, he was patted on the back by Gordon Brown, who was delighted because Darling's speech could hardly have been more craftily calculated to help Labour try to limp on in power and retain the support of its hardcore supporters until next spring's General Election.
This is because the Chancellor has put off until after the election all of the tricky decisions that might have made the Government unpopular with the voters or angered the unions.
But this short-term triumph to placate his Labour colleagues was achieved at an enormous long-term cost both to the British economy and - of far less importance - to Darling's personal reputation as Chancellor.
Make no mistake: Britain - as even Darling came close at one stage to admitting - is facing one of the two or three worst financial crises in our national history.
It is of such severity that it can be ranked only in scale alongside the desperate economic crisis of the early 1930s and the famous banking catastrophe of the 1870s which brought the City of London, and much of our industrial base, to its knees.
At such a grave and terrible time as this, our country deserved a wide-ranging, credible and, above all, courageous plan to balance the national books in the medium term.
Tragically, we were not offered any such thing.
Instead, Darling commented: 'This is not the time for a spending review.' Such a grossly irresponsible remark will undoubtedly come back to haunt him.
The truth, of course, is the exact opposite. At a time when our annual deficit sprawls towards £200billion, a spending review has never been more urgently needed.
But such a shameful failure of nerve from this Labour Government is not surprising. While there is no easy way of dealing with an annual financial deficit of almost £200billion, the answer is certainly not to be found in 'efficiency savings' and windfall taxation of the rich.
Of course, such measures can help at the margins. But the only truly effective method of confronting a deficit on the unprecedented scale now faced by Britain is by taking an axe to front-line public services. Unforgivably, Darling ducked this.
This cop-out is all the more incredible because last month's Queen's Speech contained the announcement that the Government was planning a new law to ensure that the deficit must be halved in the next four years.
However, yesterday's financial statement contained not the faintest hint of how this deficit reduction will be achieved.
This amounts to an extraordinary abdication of responsibility. Whether consciously or not, the Labour Government has clearly decided that it will do nothing to confront the financial disaster that faces us all.
Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling have jointly concluded that they are too afraid to risk the unpopularity that goes with inflicting the savage cuts on public spending.
In an act of abject cowardice, they have decided instead that such cuts must wait until after the General Election. My guess is that, most cynically, they are resigned to the fact that the Tories will remove them from power and so are more than happy for David Cameron and George Osborne to endure the obloquy that comes from slashing the national budget.
To be fair to Darling, some of his proposals were both sensible and welcome. While it is true the windfall taxation of bankers' bonuses will raise comparatively little money, the move sends out a belated signal to British financiers that their selfishness and greed will not be tolerated.
Similarly, the Chancellor was right to set out punitive measures against the tax avoiders and cheats (the prospective millionaire Tory MP Zac Goldsmith appears to be one of them) who use offshore banks to avoid making a fair contribution to the Treasury.
Furthermore, the Chancellor was surely right to force senior public- sector employees to make more of a contribution to their lavishly funded pensions.
But to realise the full scale of yesterday's dereliction of duty by Chancellor Darling it is helpful to make a couple of international comparisons. By coincidence, yesterday also saw the Irish finance minister Brian Lenihan deliver his country's budget.
Just like Britain, the Irish economy is facing one of the worst recessions in its history and, just like Britain, the deficit is out of control.
But Lenihan put Darling to shame by announcing a series a brutal cuts to state spending in areas such as welfare and public- sector salaries - adding that the pain will not let up in years to come.
Lenihan did not try to duck the problem. Meanwhile, where Darling should have been honest, principled and tough, he was dishonest, unprincipled and weak.
Of course, it is unfair to blame the Chancellor for everything. There have been many reports of ugly rows between Darling and Brown over recent weeks. Reportedly, Darling has argued for a tougher Budget, while Brown has demanded a pre-election giveaway. Judging from yesterday's apology of a pre-Budget report, Brown has won the day.
One other crucial consideration should also be borne in mind. Since Tony Blair resigned as Labour leader, private donors have all but melted away from the Labour Party.
That means that Labour is dependent on the unions to pay for next year's General Election campaign. These unions are almost entirely based among public-sector workers, and Brown and Darling dare not offend these party paymasters.
However, I doubt if Darling's reputation will ever recover from yesterday's failure. He has now entered that small and select category - alongside Norman Lamont and Anthony Barber - of truly dreadful British Chancellors, those who have put selfish or factional interests before the country.
Many politicians before Darling have faced the same choice between doing the right thing or acting expediently in the party interest.
In the economic crisis of the late Seventies, Denis Healey defied the Labour Party and the unions by instituting the savage spending cuts which were the only way of keeping Britain solvent.
His courage cost him the Labour leadership - but he is today remembered as one of this country's greatest Chancellors.
Similarly, in the spring of 1970, Labour Chancellor Roy Jenkins did the right thing by Britain with an austerity Budget, which may have cost Labour the subsequent General Election.
And Kenneth Clarke cost John Major whatever remote hope he may have had of saving the 1997 General Election by concentrating on slashing Britain's mammoth budget deficit.
To his eternal shame, Alistair Darling - like Lamont and Barber before him - has acted fecklessly and irresponsibly and will be held in contempt by history.
As a result, yesterday's pre-Budget report marked a profoundly important turning point. It was the moment that Labour totally blew it and when the Tories suddenly came of age.
Responding to Mr Darling, Shadow Chancellor George Osborne demonstrated in a first-rate speech that he has the calibre, as well as the courage, to confront our burgeoning national debt.
Meanwhile, thanks to Darling's lack of guts, Labour has forfeited its authority and is already making plans for opposition, from where it can enjoy the luxury of condemning David Cameron's Tory Party as it makes the realistic but unpopular spending decisions any responsible government would have to make.
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