Darling: Cutting Spending.

The Budget is coming, and the BBC is reporting that it will have £15 billion in spending cuts. You might expect that someone like myself, who is not a fan of government spending and believes it should be cut at every opportunity, would support this. And I do. I'll concede that it is a step in the right direction.

The problem is that this is a small step in the right direction. In fact, it is a tiny step in the right direction. Baby's first, faltering step in the right direction. If said baby is lethargic, lazy and really unwilling to start walking.

Sure, £15 billion sounds like a lot. Until you compare it with minimum of £50 billion (read that again, the minimum) that the government has spunked away on propping up failed banks. So the government may be cutting spending by £15 billion, but that still leaves a deficit of £35 billion (again, as a minimum) to cover. And that is just the money wasted on the banks, which is, in itself, a small amount compared to the overall government spend. £15 billion is a drop in the ocean.

And given the government has spent a great deal more than it planned to, where do we think it is going to find the money to cover this additional spend? I'm guessing, dear reader, that the cash will be coming from me and thee. Keep your eyes peeled in this budget for stealth taxes. And even if we don't see tax rises in this budget, they are coming. Maybe in the next Labour budgetary outing, or maybe the sneaky shits really will leave it to the Tories to have to raise taxes in their first budget. Whatever their plan is, be warned: unless there are substantial spending cuts, your tax bill is going to go up. And up.

Besides, this grudging announcement of grudging spending cuts actually flies in the face of government policy, which was that we were going to spend our way out of the recession. So one day we are increasing spending, the next day we are cutting it. This is not just lacking a coherent policy for the government, this is unthinking insanity from the government - a desperate attempt to grab headlines without thinking about any overall policy. Joined up government my arse. It is difficult enough for strategic thinking, intelligent MPs to come up with decent policies. Panicked ministers making up contradictory policies on the spur of the moment is a recipe for disaster.

Despite all this, I will applaud these cuts. So listen very carefully, and you can hear the sound of that applause. It is the sound of one hand clapping.