With the back drop of global recession and on-going banking crisis, now accompanied by the Euro Zone crisis the Coalition Government is well into public spending cuts mode.

A steady stream of announcements have already been made and of course the daddy of them all is expected in the emergency budget next week (22nd).

And so it would seem that battle lines are now well and truly drawn across the floor of the Commons and they are drawn across the key issue of public spending. With the recent history bringing us to the recent events and to next weeks budget, it’s is now clear that the issue of public spending is set to dominate this Parliament and beyond.

The trouble is now that we have a new Government we have two versions of history. On the one hand Labour ex ministers are running around saying these cuts by the new Coalition are disgraceful and hurting the neediest in society, on the other hand the new Coalition Government Ministers are running around screaming “we don’t have a choice, Labour was spending money we didn’t have”.

The fact at the heart of all this was that during the election all 3 main parties agreed that massive cuts were needed, and all 3 parties refused to say what they would cut. So now Labour are saying we wouldn’t have cut this and that without actually saying what they would cut instead. They probably beleive it’s the perogative of HM opposition, but it’s more opportunism cloaked in deceit posing as opposition.

It’s interesting that during the elction many people were saying that they wanted a hung parliament because they wanted politicians to work together to deal with the massive problems the country faces. Well they got a hung parliament and they got a coalition, a surprising coalition perhaps, but a coalition nevertheless. At such a time – a time of crisis, we also need a responsible opposition – sadly that is lacking.

Labour didn’t have the stomach for coalition, and Labour don’t have the stomach to play a reasonable , constructive role in the new parliament. If that is a shame in itself, the old style brick hurling and 13 years of collective amnesia from the labour benches is disgusting.