A damaging verdict on the Government

Five senior figures from Church of England have lambasted the Government's record on debt, family breakdown and the growing gap between rich and poor in a series of recent interviews. Cranmer covers the story on his blog. The Bishop of Manchester labelled Labour as “morally corrupt”. The Bishop of Durham on the other hand criticised the Government for not doing enough to help the poor since it came to power. "Labour made a lot of promises, but a lot of them have vanished into thin air. We have not seen a raising of aspirations in the last 13 years, but instead there is a sense of hopelessness". I don't think that the Church should be getting involved in party politics but it is indicative of the state we're in that such an astonishing attack has been made.

There has been less Christmas cheer this year. People are worried about their livelihoods and insecure about the future. The situation we are in cannot be brushed off by this Government simply as a symptom of the global economic crisis. Yet that is the policy being pursued as Brown responded to the criticism by invoking Winston Churchill and calling for a blitz spirit to overcome the current financial woes. The sad thing is that we have reached wartime levels of public debt. A level that my own and future generations will pay for in years to come.