These are presumably net figures taking into account the very substantial pay off of the national debt from something like £46billion to £6billion (did I hear those figures roughly correctly?) and by expansion of the Private Finance Initiative. The PFI is the big area where left wingers suspect New Labour of selling out: they have been financing new build in the state sector of hospitals and schools by contracting out the buildings, their maintenance and the interest payments to the private sector.
So the run down in the national debt, which has the progressive feature of reducing the income of the rentier class, is swapped for debt in land and buildings to private land companies.
Nevertheless IMO a) that will probably make it easier to control the market in land in years to come and b) the chancellor could not have greatly increased spending without increasing inflation.
The government has been efficient at handling a lot of problems with social foresight and in such a way as not to provoke hostility from finance capital, but Jim is right that it is worried about its popular image, as shown by a memo leaked today in the Times by Tony Blair himself.
As Hague's needling finally begins to work, Michael Portillo has emerged more authoritatively as a voice of reasoned logic which may give the Conservatives more authority despite their little England position on the Euro. New Labour is not immortal.
Chris Burford
London