Strange days, indeed. While most of the frontpages today are unflattering for Labour – particularly, and unsurprisingly, those of the Telegraph and the Sun – I imagine that Brown & Co. will be quite pleased with the general tone of the Budget coverage. Much of it mirrors the Independent’s view that Darling “played a weak hand well”. Or, elsewhere, there’s a kind of detached indifference about what is described as a “boring” Budget.
Yes, if you like, you can take that as proof that the Darling-and-Mandelson approach to the public finances is less politically toxic, and a good degree more sensible, than the Balls-and-Brown approach. But, to my mind, it also represents a general failure of the media, and of Labour’s poltical opposition, to hold the government to account. It is, as Danny Finkelstein wrote
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