BALLS FACTION ‘IS ALLIED WITH LEFTIST BROWN ADVISER TO TRAP CHANCELLOR’ SAY SOURCES

There are growing signs that Alistair Darling’s Budget in nine days time will depart hugely from reality, The Slog has learned.

In a very-well constructed and accurate piece in the Mail last Saturday, Peter Oborne noted that several Treasury officials have asked the Chancellor for ‘get-out’ indemnifications. They fear that future kangaroo Courts may well blame them for giving Darling poor advice. This chimes so closely with what I’ve been told, I think Oborne is right on the money. In the piece, he very intelligently added:

‘…[Darling’s] own officials…are alarmed that the Chancellor, contrary to reports that he has tried to stand up to Gordon Brown and be more honest with the public, is ignoring their advice…’

Yesterday in the Sunday Times, David Smith tried to inject some reality into Darling’s dullard mind when he observed that the IoD, CBI and foreign investors were unimpressed by the ‘not a giveaway’ line followed to date. The CBI in particular said:

“We are convinced that we need swift action to tackle the budget deficit. This means making significant spending cuts in 2010. The argument that early cuts would jeopardise the recovery is mistaken. We believe that lower spending is likely to trigger a whole series of positive developments that will assist growth.”

Over the weekend, The Slogger has been sniffing about for more on this, because Sloggers who sniff win prizes. Sorry. Anyway, three sources (TenMole among them) suggest – although with some blurred edges – that there appears to have been another rearguard action by the Very Mad People. Chief among these is Ed Balls.

“Ed feeds Gordon’s delusion like a rabid drug-pusher” said one informant, “He’s convinced him that Mandy’s prudence stuff won’t be enough to keep the lid on the Tories. Ed’s playing street-politician, and winding Gordon up about the need to go for some kind of stimulus.”

Mr Balls’ logic is that doing this will convince core Labour voters – especially those in the public sector – they must actively support Labour in order to save their jobs. This is a very powerful argument: in Machiavellian terms, it’s watertight. Sunday Times research supported this yesterday, pointing out that nearly four times as many voters think the Tories will cut more than Labour. The only problem is that, after such a crypto-QE Budget, the likes of Fitch would be marking Britain down as a Triple-F credit risk.

Ed’s trouble is that he’s not good with sums and ethics. Tenmole, however, has been consistently of the view that the one True Believer who can still convince Gordon he is the Emperor Brownannicus remains robin-shaped fiery Scot Kirsty MacNeill.

As the Scotsman noted last month, ‘Move over Sarah Brown, Kirsty is the woman with Gordon’s ear’. TenMole explains:

“She’s part of the Lesbian and Bisexual Scottish Workers for Revolution Party. She really does think that two fingers up to the IMF and EU is the way to stay in power – that the workers come first and to hell with the deficit. A few sessions with her and Balls, and the PM falls off his trolley again.”

I have no idea as yet what the First Business Lord thinks about all this; but I doubt if his general view (that Kirsty is a piece of dangerous anti-matter) has changed that much over the last few months. Her appointment to a senior advisory role (the lady is all of 29 years old) last September sent Mandy into a private outpouring of bile so fierce it made his original embarrassing verdict on Brown seem complimentary by comparison.

The point is, does the man over at the Treasury (now certain, I’m told, that he will lose his job if Gordon survives the Will of the People and the Party) care a tinker’s curse about any of this? Curiously, it may be that he does. Also over the weekend, the obesely beastly Young Ostrogoth Simon Heffer wrote in the Telegraph that Gordon Brown is already dictating the Budget line. Our Treasury Mole suggests that line by line might be more accurate.

“We’ve no real control over things any more” says this now veteran Slog source, “But it’s obvious that the Chancellor is simply taking notes at the moment. This is why senior people here are asking for indemnification.”

The Slogger also understands that the unreality of what Darling is allegedly copying down is further exacerbated by a strongly worded senior staff memo in the Treasury painting a very black picture of falling demand in the EU – by far our biggest export customer.

But The Slogger remains to be completely convinced that Alistair shouldn’t just tell his compatriot to stick it up his kilt. So far, only one suggestion opposing this Darling defence has come out of the Labour woodwork – and while it would be disingenuous of me to suggest that this source is anywhere near being ‘a Cabinet insider’ or similar, he does offer a logical explanation:

“We think Alistair is certain Brown can be removed very rapidly if the Party retains power. We think he’s also decided, if rape is inevitable, that an overtly pro-stimulus approach might do our election prospects no harm at all.”

The ‘we’ pronoun there, by the way, denotes membership of Anyone But Gordon, the still active but dwindling organisation which – as we all know – is simply a figment of my fevered imagination. This lot have been let down so many times by the senior Labour jellyfish and the Libdems, it’s a wonder they keep going – especially as quite a few of them have already announced their departure from the Westminster scene.

But setting aside the cynicism of Alistair Darling (ruin the country and then get a medal for saving it…very Tony Blair) the scenario does kind of hang together. The hope of everyone from Darling to Mandelson is that New Labour’s key project leaders won’t all hang together. That is, of course, up to the voters. Perhaps those electors employed in the public sector will receive an indirect bribe on March 24th after all.