2015/16 Spending Review - an ever tightening noose around Labour’s neck

There’s much media hype today about the Chancellor’s announcement of spending plans for 2015/16. As Professor Colin Talbot notes on his Whitehall Watch blog, given that every previous such announcement since 1998 has been adjusted in subsequent budgets they might be taken with a pinch of salt.
    But now that the Labour leadership is signed up unconditionally to the Coalition spending plans if elected in year one - following the May 2015 General Election (as Ed Balls and Ed Miliband both confirmed at the weekend) - then this is a win-win day for the Tories and Lib Dems.
   Snuff out any alternative to their cuts programme and lock in austerity well into the next Parliament. As yesterday's FT editorial said about the spending review - 'the Tories are setting the parameters of the political debate ahead of the election':
http://whitehallwatch.org/2013/06/23/the-politics-of-spending-review-2013-why-now-why-at-all/