Yesterday’s Budget marks the end of the New Labour era, according to Professor Mark Wickham-Jones from the Department of Politics.
Commenting on the Budget, he told Bloomberg that:
‘This looks like a short-term budget aimed at a spring 2010 election, gambling on a small recovery that will obfuscate the debt issue.’
In an earlier statement, he said:
‘This is a political budget that highlights the extent of the challenges confronting the Labour Party. The current level of public debt requires a credible political and economic strategy but the chancellor has failed to use the budget to introduce the tough measures required to get the country out of its current economic crisis.
‘Darling’s immediate goal appears to be an attempt to restore the party's political fortunes through a series of carefully targeted but small-scale initiatives. The problem with such measures is that they ignore the United Kingdom's underlying economic difficulties, namely that the debt must be funded and that the debt must be repaid. This budget convinces on neither.’Professor Wickham is an expert on the history of the Labour Party over the last twenty-five years. His particular area of interest is the evolution of the Party's policy commitments since 1983, the changes to its organisational structure and the nature of its electoral outlook.