The Tory/ Lib-Dem line that their cuts are only a fair and necessary price to pay for private-sector prosperity has been demolished by economic figures for October-December 2010.
GDP had been rising modestly since the end of 2009, after crashing in 2008-9. It dipped against in October-December, at a rate indicating economic decline of two per cent a year.
The Tories say it was just the snow. Hard-headed capitalists don't think so. The pound fell on financial markets. The Financial Times quoted bank economist Bob Carnekll: "With public spending cuts set to bite this year into what already looks a fairly soft starting point, concern over the effect of the UK’s ambitious budget restraint on its growth could begin to mount..."
Unions had started to drift into a stance of accepting the cuts as inevitable and trying to soften them through voluntary-redundancy and redeployment deals. The new economic statistics should jolt them into new awareness of the openings to build a huge movement to block the cuts altogether.