A story that has received considerable coverage this morning is Alistair Darling’s admission that, even under Labour, drastic public spending cuts will be necessary.
Asked by the BBC how this government’s cuts would compare to Margaret Thatcher’s in the 1980s, he said:
They will be deeper and tougher.
Where we make the precise comparison, I think, is secondary to an acknowledgement that these reductions will be tough.
But, hang on. Haven’t we heard this somewhere before? Today, the Guardian has the headline “Alistair Darling: we will cut deeper than Margaret Thatcher”. Amusingly, a month ago to the day, the Mirror proclaimed: “George Osborne to make spending cuts deeper Margaret Thatcher’s”.
The article quotes the Tory shadow chancellor as saying:
Yes — tougher than Margaret Thatcher. We are not shy about taking the tough decisions.
George Osborne has today been quick to jump on Darling’s comments as evidence that “Labour has been found out”, and has been dishonest in claiming that it can continue to spend.
This is disingenuous: no one denies that cuts will be necessary, but the question, as our economics columnist David Blanchflower, among others, has pointed out, is one of timing.
But Darling’s remarks do indicate inconsistency in Labour’s position — the party has appeared torn between a Keynesian agenda and the urge to follow the Tory promises of swingeing cuts, in much the same way as the Tories have clearly felt compelled to out-Labour Labour on the NHS.
The close symmetry of Osborne and Darling’s phrasing is almost beyond satire. But this seems to be less a common admission of an indisputable truth (that we must have “tougher” cuts than Thatcher’s, asap) and more another sign of the void of ideology that lies at the centre of the present political debate.
Voter apathy is hardly surprising. It doesn’t look like much of a choice, does it?
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