The union leaders don’t want to admit it. Brendan Barber argued this morning that Labour should keep on borrowing and spending until unemployment is on the way down - which could be several years away. But the simplistic debate between cuts and investment is now over.

We’ve now heard Alistair Darling and (today) Peter Mandelson both spell out the new message; that the UK is heading for difficult choices in public spending.

Earlier this summer Gordon Brown was maintaining the illusion that Labour would be able to preserve spending increases in the coming years. Here is what I wrote at the time, as a reminder. (Brown said “They (Tories) would cut savagely by 10 per cent and that is not going to be allowed to happen.”)

Now Downing Street is briefing that Brown has always been fiscally conservative over two decades; an attempt to erase the “investment” message of June.

Nick Robinson argues on his blog today that Labour is trying to rewrite history. Francis Elliott wonders just how great the difference is between the two parties.

Not a lot, you might think. In effect, Labour has been reduced to painting the Tories as maniacal small-state ideologues who - in the words of Mandelson - are “salivating about wielding the axe”. Will the public agree?

September 14, 2009 6:42pm in Budget, Labour, Tax, UK economy, UK politics | Comment