.... my head is badly bruised from constant banging against a brick wall.

The Skin

......is that a lot of people still blame Labour for getting us into the current economic mess in the first place. Labour were in charge when the credit crunch started, they were the ones who bailed out the banks.

And there's still a lot of people who blame Labour for overspending when they were in charge, although often the people who blame Labour for all this seem to think that all the money was spent on social security payments for immigrants rather then PFI, bank bailouts and wars in Afghanistan & Iraq.

It's a fair bet that the Tories and Lib Dems will go into the next election still blaming Labour for the ongoing economic mess and therefore many in the Labour party will feel that they need to prove themselves fiscally responsible.

I think he's concerned that without a neoliberal veneer, Tory Party coffers would be swollen by donations from the ultra-rich desperate to prevent a nominally leftish Labour government.

The "cuts too" mantra gives him cover with the Party's Blairite wing which seeks to destabilise his leadership.

I hope that for all the talk of "tough choices mean some cuts" that Milliband can u-turn in power and commit the government to protecting the welfare state and vastly increasing capital spending.

It's the only specific policy I've seen given for this 'iron discipline' approach; the amounts involved are pretty tiny compared with the overall budget. It may be that Balls and Miliband see it as a symbolic cut they can do without actually affecting many people (and those who are affected are well off, and more likely to be Tory, to boot).