Labour Ate My Hamster, say Tories

It is depressing, but far from surprising, to observe the press briefings from our new chancellor on the so-called "scorched earth policy" of the outgoing Labour government. 'There is even less money than we thought' wail the Tories. 'Labour ate my hamster' scream the tabloids. 'The previous government implemented precisely the policies it said it would and all of the spending was established before the election was called' reports no-one at all, unfortunately.

It's a tried and tested opening move for any new administration to exclaim that it has found things far worse than you could imagine. In sales terms it's called expectations management - painting a bleaker picture than you actually see so that you can later claim a great victory. But it also serves to get a few more anti-Labour headlines into the press to counter the dangerous stories that, post-election, Labour is now polling into the 30s and has had its biggest ever jump in membership.

But when one looks at the facts rather than the rhetoric, it's clear that the "fury" of Cameron and Osborne was prepared well in advance, and was based on scoring political points rather than finding any skeletons in closets. Let's look at their list of grievances.

The highest profile one is bonus payments to civil servants and NHS managers. Only it turns out that the bonuses were a few thousand pounds each to a few thousand middle managers, amounting to £15m in total across the entirety of England and Wales. So, you've lost the goodwill of thousands of workers and saved... sod all. Bravo Gideon.

Then they lay into defence spending - the same people who told Labour their defence spending was too low, now want to cut tens of billions from vital contracts to which we are already committed - and we'd waste ten times the £15 million clawed back from hard working civil servants by contract ending costs alone!

And they're even tagging the "eBorders" project onto this 'scorched earth' narrative, saying that it is running late and over-budget. Really? You mean like, erm, the last government said it was?

Scorched earth? Get over yourselves. Labour brought openness and accountability to the business of government. All the decisions being decried now by the Tories were made publicly and unequivocally by Labour. If this is the sort of spin we are going to get from Dave and Nick's great adventure, then it's certainly nothing more than politics as usual.