Darling's Budget is a Pre-ordained Failure

The budget policies being outlined in the trailers are pathetic. What growth can we go for with:

'— £300 million for existing and new council homes to be better insulated;

— £200 million to help Britain to make better use of its island status by pushing the growth of wind turbines, hydro-electric power and other renewable energy technologies;

— A move to kickstart the housing market by offering to underwrite £50 billion worth of new mortgage-backed assets to bring the securitised home loans market back to life;

— £2 billion to help the jobless. There will be more benefits staff, while under-25s who have been jobless for more than a year will be guaranteed a job, work experience or training;

— A boost to North Sea oil companies through tax incentives to explore old or inaccessible fields;

— A “scrappage” scheme under which motorists would be given an incentive of up to £2,000 to buy a new car. The details are far from settled even now, but a plan will be included.

The Treasury has already said it is seeking efficiency savings of £5 billion by 2011. Mr Darling is expected to say that should be extended by a further £10 billion over the following three years. ' (Times)

Home insulation, wind turbines, more state employees to administer the unemployed, Rockall oil fields to be considered (again), subsidised trade-in on your old car, a few extra state employees to be put in the 'to be redistributed' pool.

This doesn't even pretend to be a serious budget. They're going to the IMF - let them do the dirty work clearing up after Brown, at least they aren't the Conservatives, and Labour can say it wasn't their fault, it was a global institution's response to a globally induced crisis. You can hear the arguments now. We are part of the European Union and the Eurozone, even if we do not use the Euro, and subject to its strictures and the Growth and Stability Pact. We have been subject, like all other countries, even while better placed than most to withstand the downturn, to a global crisis and it is right to turn to global institutions for the assistance we need to restabilise our economy and help hard-working families and the young workless. There must be a fairer intergenerational balance of resources - hang on to your hats, your wallets, your savings, your pensions all middle class grown-ups, you're about to lose at least a third of your wealth and probably a half through currency devaluation, gross inflation, pension contract rejection and outright confiscation.

And a nasty rider to all this will be a warning that in such troubled times it is not just economic calm that must be maintained, but political stability while extraordinary measures to achieve a global reordering not seen since 1945 are permitted to work.

Darling's budget, the last in the old economics and politics of the nation state, will fail. It is supposed to fail. It is to be merely the curtain raiser and precipitator of the new progressive order.