Mark Pack

It’s been a common political refrain: Labour planned massive cuts in public spending, Labour lost the election and but then Labour campaign repeatedly against cuts without ever saying what it would have cut.

We’ve never been told how Labour would have cut that £44 billion it was planning on. Nor have we heard why Labour think the government is an extreme right-wing baby-eating one even though after all the cuts the level of public spending will still be higher than it was for seven years under Labour.

But with the Budget round the corner, Labour has broken its silence this week. We’ve had the Ed Miliband / Ed Balls press conference setting out what they think should be done differently in the Budget next week.

And the sum total of their plans? £2 billion. That’s 0.3% of the planned total public spending, with 99.7% left untouched.

If Labour thinks the government’s approach to spending is so wrong, shouldn’t this week’s plans have amounted to rather more than a 0.3% difference?