Welcome to Gordon Brown's Britain

This week's budget was an unashamedly redistributive one, no surprise you'd think from a Labour Chancellor running for the party's leadership. Except of course for the fact that it redistributed from the poor and the struggling to the better off and the rich.

This is the moment when all those people who have secretly hoped that Gordon brown will somehow be different from Tony Blair when he moves into no 10 should finally realise that he offers just more of the same.

In choosing to cut the standard rate of income tax but abolish the lower 10p rate and to reduce the main corporation tax while raising taxes on small businesses Brown has revealed his ture colours.

Brown's apologists claim that the the abolition of the 10p rate on the first £3,000 of taxable income doesn't matter because, the poorest are all eligible for working tax credit. This ignores the appalling take up rate of the fiendishly complex tax credit system, but more than this it deliberately ignores the fact that many people who are on below average incomes cannot claim credits because the cut off level is £12,000.

As Channel 4 news pointed out that includes junior nurses for instance on £12,600, under the new regime their tax bill will rise a whoping 9% from £1355 to £1475. while there are others who earn less than £12,000 who arent eligble either, such as under 25s, many part time workers and older women, so that someone earning just £7,500 could actually see their tax bill double from £227 to £454.

This was a taste of things to come under Gordon Brown and it is simply indefensible, those Labour backbenchers with their order papers in the air were not just cheering Gordon Brown they were waving good bye to any claim that their party might once have had to being a socially progressive one.

Labour has become an empty electoral machine, increasingly devoid of purpose and meaning. On the basis of the evidence this week Gordon Brown will not provide it.