You are in:
What Have They Ever Done For Us?
The New Labour machine is coming off the tracks at an accelerating pace. Now even those achievements the party faithful crow are Labour's greatest legacy look set to crumble.
It took a while for Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling's comments in an interview published on Saturday to sink in for the mainstream media. But by Monday, the opinion columns registered their surprise that Darling, once thought to be little more than PM Gordon Brown's stooge, had blown the lid of the government's claim that the era of "boom and bust" had finished for good. Darling told the Guardian that the economic conditions facing Britain "are arguably the worst they've been in 60 years... And I think it's going to be more profound and long-lasting than people thought."
So from no bust, only boom, we've gone to no boom, just bust?
Darling adds that mistakes were made in dealing with the "crisis a week" which have dogged Brown's last twelve months. He appears to distance himself from the PM's unpopular abolition of the 10 pence base rate for taxation and admits great mistakes were made, not least the loss of a series of discs which contained information on practically every family in the country.
As for the state of the economy, well, as Chancellor Darling is supposed to be the man who should no. Nevertheless, his dire prediction that we're headed for epoch-making collapse has been dismissed - most notably, by those on the right. Commentators as diverse as Iain Dale and Bruce Anderson have argued that this can't be the case. However, Anderson draws attention to why Darling should make such a claim.
Why, indeed, should someone so politically and personally close to the Prime Minister so publicly rubbish one of his boss's most treasured mantras? The newspapers are already suggesting that Darling might face the chop for his remarks, which Anderson says could be his Geoffrey Howe moment.
For ten years, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown was the economy. He frustrated his counterparts in Brussels by lecturing them on how Britain had escaped the decade-long slump that has cursed the western European members of the EU, and took the credit for Britain's performance during the boom years. The strength of the economy, under his stewardship, gave him a platform from which he could plot and scheme against his rival, Tony Blair - had the economy faltered, Blair could have ditched his treacherous minister.
Blair was pushed out of office, but is likely to be having the last laugh. Despite the appalling wrongdoings of his government and huge reservations about his personal performance, Blair got away with murder as long as the sun shone on the economy. As he was ejected from Downing Street, the first reports of dark clouds began to appear on the horizon. Brown said we had nothing to fear, thanks to his masterful stewardship of HMS Britain.
And now, just over a year later, one of Brown's closest allies says we are heading for a Great Depression style crash. Were, then, the ten years of economic growth under Labour an illusion, during which huge financial problems were swept under the carpet?
So much for that legacy. Another great claim is that Labour has brought crime under control. The average resident of one of Britain's great cities might boggle at the figures cooked up by police and the Home Office, but according to official reports, most forms of crime have fallen in the past decade. Well Hooray. Except that a report issued by that same Home Office says that all forms of crime, from violence, burglary and the government's particular bugbear, "far-right extremism" are set to soar as the economy slumps.
"Violent crime could rise by 19 per cent in the event of a full-blown recession, while theft and burglaries could rise by 7 per cent this year", the Times reports.
Even the Olympics could be targeted by criminals and terrorists - £300 million has been set aside for security for the 2012 Games in London.
The Home Office says that the leaked paper hadn't been signed off by the minister; indeed, one could argue that little is new in it - crime rising alongside poverty is a self-evident truth for Labour and its supporters, though older Britons scoff that crime levels were lower when poverty was even more extreme.
Few agree on what the next twelve months will bring Britain and its economy: But the fate of this government, and all who sail in her, couldn't look more assured: They're bust, and they're going down.
