The Conservative-Liberal Government’s softening up exercise for next week’s budget continues without shame.

Although this week’s report from the new independent Office for Budgetary Responsibility reported UK borrowing to be lower and tax receipts higher than the Labour Government predicted in March’s budget, the ConLibs continue with their fiction that having opened the books they have found things to be much worse than they feared, as an excuse for the cuts the Tories have wanted to make regardless.

The nobel prize-winning economist, Joe Stiglitz, the Financial Times’ veteran economics columnist, Martin Wolf, and several others have repeated their warnings that the ConLibs’ policy risks stifling growth, reducing demand and tipping us back into recession - as well of course of pushing unemployment far higher than it would otherwise have been.

This is the crazy policy one expects from the Tories but it is extraordinary that the Lib Dems appear to have meekly swallowed it. Keynes must be turning in his grave!

Another short-sighted and wrong-headed decision by the Government was their announcement today to abolish the Regional Development Agencies.

These provided a much needed strategic development body that could rise above the petty turf wars and nimbyism of some local athorities and ensure that investment, particularly in major infrastructure projects, happened in those places where it was most needed and provided maximum benefit to the region as a whole. It looks like a return to the bad old days of “buggins’ turn” or where those local authorities with the loudest voice or closest friends in Government skew decision making.

Exeter’s 36 year campaign to have its unitary council status restored cleared its final parliamentary hurdles this week.

In a hotly contested debate on Monday in the House of Lords, an attempt by Liberal Democrat Peers to kill the legislation was overwhelmingly defeated.

A motion from the Cross Bench Peer Lady Butler Sloss expressing regret at the move and asking for a further delay was passed, but not with as big a majority as had been expected.

The only other two cross benchers who spoke, supported Exeter’s case, as did the Labour Peers Lord (Larry) Whitty and Baroness (Brenda) Dean.

The orders was also approved easily both in committee and on the floor in the House of Commons.

It was a great tribute to the hard work of everyone in Exeter over so many years. An all-party delegation from the city last week, led by Conservative Lord Mayor Cllr John Winterbottom and including Lib Dem, Liberal and Labour councillors did a brilliant job at persuading cross bench and Tory Peers not to support the fatal amendment.

Now that the orders for both Exeter and Norwich have been approved by Parliament, after lengthy debate in both Houses and are law, it is far less likely that the outstanding legal challenge by Norfolk and Devon will succeed. Parliament is sovereign and the courts are usually very reluctant to overturn such a strong democratic mandate.

Also, one of the effects of the legislation has been to postpone the city council elections that were due to take place in one third of Exeter wards in May in order to hold all out elections to the new unitary authority next year.

So those councillors who would have faced elections in May have been told they can continue for one more year. By the time the court sits it will be too late to reinstate those elections so the court will want to be very mindful indeed of the consequences of any ruling on the democratic process.

Meanwhile David Cameron has been embarrassing his local parliamentary candidate in Exeter today telling local Tories they were wrong to support Exeter’s bid. Cameron is either incredibly ill-informed or astonishingly insensitive or both.

Exeter Tory leader Yolanda Henson has fought for years for unitary status and was ably supported by John Winterbottom, Norman Shiel and Jeff Coates among others for last week’s lobby of the Lords.

Cameron said a Tory Government would reverse the decision. But as doing so would require primary legislation could anyone really see an incoming Tory government making this their first priority and upsetting Exeter Conservatives in the process?

When can we expect the Conservative parliamentary candidate to finally speak up for Exeter, support local Conservative councillors and call publicly for her national party to allow Exeter to fulfil its ambition and call on Tory-run Devon County Council to drop its costly and futile legal shenanigans?

It seems just possible that as people take a long hard look at the Conservatives and begin to give the Government some credit for its handling of the global downturn, the election is no longer the foregone conclusion that some people, including most of the media, have been assuming for so long.

Labour are still the underdogs and we must keep fighting like mad, but the narrowing of the polls is certainly putting a spring in people’s step and boosting morale at a vital moment.

It is extraordinary that after 5 years at the helm, Cameron has failed to change his party or develop a coherent and robust set of ideas and policies.

Labour must hold our nerve, keep working hard, campaigning hard, reminding people of what we’ve achieved, of Gordon and Alistair’s sound stewardship during the downturn and focus people’s attention to the fundamental choice the country will face when the election comes: the same old Tories or radical and progressive change with Labour.

Conservative claims that 54 percent of girls in poor areas are pregnant before they’re 18 shows once again how cavalier the Tories are with the truth.

In fact, the figure is 5.4 percent, lower than it was in 1997 and the teenage pregnancy rate has fallen significantly as a whole.

The Tories say they put a decimal point in the wrong place which mutliplied the rate ten fold. But the figure appears 3 times in their latest “Broken Britain” document. The fact that no-one spotted the mistake says something much more revealing about the Tories. They actually believed the 54 percent figure was right - showing how completely out of touch they are with the country they claim they want to serve.

Three cheers for Mark Easton, the BBC’s Home Affairs Editor, for filleting the Tories’ claims about crime. Mark is a rarity among journalists today in that he cares about facts and accuracy.

While Cameron has claimed crime, including violent crime has gone up, it’s actually gone down, significantly, Mark points out.

It’s a shame there aren’t more journalists of Mark’s integrity and courage. Most appear to be afraid of upsetting the Tories by subjecting their claims and policies to proper scrutiny. Could that be that they are hoping for special treatment if the Tories win the election?

The Mirror’s James Lyons is another honorable exeption this collective cowardice. He has built on Mark’s work today to show how the Tories have misled people on health, education and welfare figures too.

The public will make their own judgement about politicians who play politics with a tragedy like the Edlington case.

The Edlington case is dreadful and there was clearly catastrophic failure by the agencies involved. But to claim the case shows Britain is “broken” or “morally bankrupt” is wrong and not supported by the evidence.

The overwhelming majority of children and youg people are not criminals or sadists and the vast majority of parents do a good job.

Anyone who believes quality local and regional news is important should be aware that the Tories have said they will pull the plug on regional news on ITV.

They say they’ll just leave matters to the market. But no-one who knows the TV or news business thinks quality regional news can be delivered by the market alone. Neither do they believe that the Tory idea of US-style ultra local TV channels is either economically viable or would be of any quality.

The Tories’ policy would leave the BBC with a monopoly, which would be bad for the BBC and for democracy.

The latest fall in unemployment is encouraging and means the jobless total is nearly half a million lower than was predicted a year ago.

It is also far lower than in the recessions of the 1990s and 1980s. This is as a direct result of Government action - to save the banks and support the economy, but also the targeted schemes to help people who have lost their jobs back into training or work quickly and support particularly aimed at helping young people.

In the 1980s and 1990s unemployment was considered a “price worth paying” by the then Conservative Government.

During the global crisis of the last 18 months, Tory politicians have said we should “let the recession take it course” and David Cameron has opposed every single measure the Government has taken that has meant the impact of the global financial crisis on individuals, families and businessses has been far less severe than people feared and far less than in the downturns when the Conservatives were in power.

Labour needs to constantly remind people of this as well as point out that the measures the Conservatives propose for the future would risk turning the recovery into a devestating “double dip” recession - throwing more people on the dole and costing the country far more in wrecked lives and needless benefits payments in the long run.

How telling that the lawyer of Munir Hussain, jailed for an attack on a burglar but now freed by the Appeal Court in a sensible decision, says the existing law is right and strongly opposes Conservative proposals to relax the law on self defence.

Under the current law, introduced by Labour, people are perfectly entitled to use “reasonable force” in self defence and the courts have generally interpreted this sensibly.

But in a knee-jerk response to the inititial sentence against Mr Hussain, the Conservatives said they would change the law to allow people to use violence unless it was “grossly disproportionate”. How on earth are juries or judges to decide was “grossly” means?

The Tory plan would mean that it would be fine to use “very” or “highly” disproportionate violence. The release of Mr Hussain and the strong support of his lawyer for the law as it stands leaves the Tories’ headline grabbing posturing in tatters.

It was encouraging to see Goldman Sachs predicting the UK economy would grow faster than any other major country next year.

Also today, the International Monetary Fund has warned against the premature withdrawal of the economic stimulus – saying to do so, as the Tories advocates, would wreck the recovery.

It’s also heartening to see how repeatedly, when the Conservatives policies come under the slightest scrutiny, they unravel. They’ve changed their policy on tax and marriage four times in two weeks and it’s still not clear.

Climate change, which David Cameron used as an issue to try to portray himself as modern and moderate – is ranked bottom of their list of priorities by Conservative candidates and a growing number of Conservative politicians are defying Cameron on the issue.Airbrushing his image on Conservative billboards was a blunder too – it feeds an underlying suspicion people have about the Tories that what you see is not what you’ll get.