The Times
"So the spending review works. And Mr Brown knows it. Robert Peston’s biography of the former Chancellor tells how Mr Brown is pressed by Bill Clinton’s adviser Sidney Blumenthal to run a budget surplus but rejects the advice because it would make things too easy for the Tories, reducing the political potency of the spending review. And in 2006 he put off the review for another year so that he could announce its results when he first became Prime Minister.
Which means we are due one right now. Right now, I tell you! But are we going to get one? I think not. We will get a Budget, but no proper spending review. And given its political potency, that can only mean one thing. That the Government knows that a spending review would be so painful, so dreadful, that they are prepared to forgo its usual advantages.
It is scandalous to have had a review through all the good years but refuse to have one now. .."
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