Time to find out where loyalties lie

AT LAST, the timetable for the final few weeks of the current government’s reign appears to be mapped out clearly. The announcement yesterday that the chancellor’s Budget will be delivered on March 24 would seem to confirm that the General Election will be held, as widely expected, on Thursday, May 6, with parliament dissolved early next month. While the timetable now appears to be clearer, the strategy Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling will adopt is anything but. Britain is saddled with frighteningly high debt levels, and there can be little doubt that the prudent approach to the Budget would be one which slashes public spending, raises both direct and indirect taxes and increases duty on Labour’s cash cow – alcohol, tobacco and petrol. Were it any other year but election year, that is undoubtedly the approach Mr Darling would take. There are, however, other major considerations for him and Mr Brown to ponder, not least their own, and their party’s, political survival in the wake of a Budget which would be hugely unpopular, particularly with traditional, Labour grass-roots support.

The government will be almost certainly resigned to losing most, if not all, their marginal seats, but there remains a large number of constituencies where the real battle for power will be won and lost; seats the Tories must gain from Labour if they are to form the next government. It is these key seats which will be focussing Mr Brown’s and Mr Darling’s minds in the two short weeks between now and Budget day. The prime minister has shown himself to be utterly single-minded when it comes to clinging on to power, and it will surprise no one if he sanctions a series of measures which are good for short-term Labour gain, but totally wrong for Britain’s return to prosperity. The country is about to find out where his true loyalties lie.