Black holes are for Tories..

...in perhaps more than on sense.

How times change! When Brown announced in his budget of 2000 that he would spend an extra £2 billion on health and an extra £1 billion on education, he congratulated himself on his generosity.

Last autumn, when George Osborne committed the Tories to raising the inheritance tax threshold to £1 million, costing about the same in lost tax income, the cry was that it could not be funded. Now, having told the police that the relatively small sum to fund pay increases recommended by an arbitration panel could not be afforded, we can now fund £2.7 billion to cover up Brown's mistakes over the 10% tax band.

There is one law for Labour and another for the Tories, clearly, especially when the former are in danger of losing a by-election. Make no mistake, this rather rushed through, ham-fisted change which benefits middle income earners as much as the very low paid is an election bribe.

It is, of course, an arrangement for one year only, and is a deferred tax rise, which next year will have to be born by higher income earners, some of who may decide to decamp. Alternatively it is an addition to the level of Government debt, and this is already rising strongly, which must be serviced in years to come from higher tax receipts.

All of which indicates that the chickens are coming home to roost. Bottler, who managed to convince millions that he was one of the great chancellors, successfully denying what most observers have been warning about coming for a few years now.

He survived the massive and wasteful extravagance because his policies persuaded people to cut down on their saving, increase their spending on credit and enjoy the low inflation from cheap imports. There are no longer cheap imports, increasingly as sterling plummets, and inflation is beginning to appear. Unfortunately from his mis-management of the economy he has no reserves with which to prop up spending.

His excuse of the credit crunch being the sole cause of our anxiety does not need to be evoked. His own policies were going to cause problems eventually without any outside influences. Our competitive position in the medium term is threatened by our declining productivity and our deteriorating educational system. Our chronic balance of payments deficits will bring their own problems. Our ever-growing lower productivity public sector with gold plated pensions represents a time bomb. Do I need to go on?