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.

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.

One of the interesting things about this downturn compared with the recessions of the 1980s and 1990s is the number of people who are still finding jobs.

250,000 are moving off unemployment-related benefits every month.

Thanks in part to the measures the Government has taken to support the economy and the specific measures to help the unemployed it looks as if some of the direst predictions that were made about the impact of the credit crunch on the unemployment rate may turn out to have been unfounded. The same might be said of repossessions. Their level is running well below that of the recessions under the previous Conservative Governments.

I would not go so far as to say confidently, as the British Chambers of Commerce have, that the worst of the recession is over – there are still far too many uncertainties.

But it does look as if the decisions the Government took, opposed at every turn by the Tories, have had a positive impact.

David Cameron’s admission at Primie Minister’s Questions yesterday that unemployment would continue to rise until 2014 under a Tory Government was his second major gaffe in two days.

People well remember the last Conservative Government saying “unemployment is a price worth paying” as they mishandled the last recession.

We now know Cameron would repeat those grievous errors, slash investment now and condemn many more people to the dole queues for much longer.

Just as the real Tory instinct for slash and burn and to hell with the consequences has now been revealed, so has their antipathy to meaningful reform of Parliament.

Look at the contributions from Tory backbenchers over recent days in the debate on the Commons standards bill - the bill to clean up Parliament. Virtually all of them have spoken against the bill and to keep MPs regulating themselves. Even after the expenses scandal, they just don’t get it.