A Real Labour Budget

After listening to all the detail of the speech itself, it took a while for the real significance of Alistair Darling's budget to sink in. This is a real Labour budget, that at last puts some very red-tinged water between us and the Tories.

A Labour budget which shows we are determined to invest our way out of recession, not deepen it with cuts.

We are putting government money into the green economy, to stimulate investment in renewables, in re-cycling and the emerging high-technology industries that will create thousands of jobs. Many of these will be in the Highlands which already has a large number of such early stage businesses.

We are making sure our young people have training so that they can move into jobs when the economy picks up again. We are making sure that pensioners on lower incomes are protected from the worst effects of the recession. Small businesses, which make of the bulk of the economy, are getting real help to manage their cash flow, which in turn protects jobs.

The Tory answer to the recession - dramatic cuts in government spending - is exactly the policy which deepened and lengthened the great recession of the 1930s.

Sometimes you can tell you have got something right by the noise and clamour of your opposition. David Cameron's bluster today in response to Darling's speech, and the howls of anguish from right wing media about the 50% tax band tell me everything I need to know about whose side we are on. The ordinary people.

On the 10 o'clock news tonight, there was a piece about unemployment in a small town in South Wales. As always, its not the financiers and noisy professional classes who lose out most in this kind of recession. Its the same working people who have always lost out. That's the people whose side we are on. That's the people this budget is really for.

A real Labour budget. At last.