Jonathan Todd

“A week is a long time in politics, but four years is a very short time”, as Michael Barber once told Tony Blair’s Cabinet in a misquotation of Harold Wilson. Alistair Darling will be hoping that the first part of this is true and that next week’s Budget allows the political focus to move on from the Damien McBride-affair. This affair has undermined the momentum that Gordon Brown built at the G20 conference and Darling will attempt to recapture this.

However, he might reflect upon the second part of Barber’s observation, as he draws up his Budget. Anatole Kaletsky may have him question its wisdom, while Dieter Helm would praise it. An energy crisis may only be six years away, argues Helm. The recent comments of Lord Browne may cause us to wonder about the proper role of energy markets in both keeping the lights on and meeting our climate change obligations. Helm makes a convincing case that government decisions made now will massively bear upon our ability to keep the lights on in six or so years time; with the possibility that we will be diminished in this ability far more real than we might imagine. While Kaletsky joins Samuel Brittan in encouraging Darling to focus on economic growth in 2010, not the state of public finances in 2015. The later only deteriorates without the former, even if focusing on the former involves more borrowing now, which inevitably has implications for public finances in 2015.

The McBride-affair has made the political challenge facing Darling even bigger. But, as Matthew Taylor has noted, there are some “huge choices to be made” on policy. These are such that the policy-making and economic dilemmas facing Darling are, arguably, even bigger than the political dilemmas.  They are certainly more important. This isn’t a time to play political games but to face up, as honestly and as fully as possible, to the real challenges that we face as a country. Ironically, to do so might also be the best political response. This would be to place political strategy above political tactics; the reverse of what Taylor claims is the defining trait of Gordon Brown’s administration.