THE GUARDIAN: Message that 'we're all in it together' seems hollow as chancellor takes aim at public sector workers and those reliant on credits
This was the day George Osborne did his best not to be buried by bad news. He came to the chamber of the House of Commons to deliver an autumn statement that prophesied a long, bleak winter for the British economy, a downturn unmatched in the postwar era, one that would stretch for seven lean years.
His task was to release a mudslide of gloomy numbers, forecasts and projections – and somehow remain standing, looking like a man who not only bore no blame for this dire state of affairs but who would pull the country out of the mess. There can't have been many tougher assignments in recent British political history. Just one of the announcements Osborne had to make would, in normal times, have represented a day of despair for a chancellor. But these are not normal times.
So he had to declare that the coalition's signature political promise would be broken: they would not, after all, pay off the deficit by the end of this parliament. That goal had now receded to the distant horizon of 2016-17.
All the pain, the tax rises and spending cuts, that were meant to turn red ink black, would be, if not quite in vain, in pursuit of a goal now revealed as vanishingly remote. » | Jonathan Freedland | Tuesday, November 29, 2011
