Recent figures show that the government’s budget deficit for December alone hit £11.4bnlast year. Top this off with forecasts that suggest the government will exceed its own borrowing projections made just three months ago the Pre-Budget Report; and add in the mix that the National Budget has been kicked back by over a month from the usual March date to the end of April and we can see and increasingly clear picture that the public finances are in a big mess, and are deteriorating rapidly.

Unemployment also rose this week to just shy of 2 million, and the UK has been confirmed as official in recession, with a 1.5% shrink in the size of the economy in the last quarter of 2008 alone – the worst quarterly figure since 1980.

With the economy on the slide, the public finances show no sign of improvement, and there is little hope of any change to this in the coming years. By 2011, we will be borrowing in excess of £1trillion.

Labour are leaving the UK with a legacy of debt, a debt that our generation will be left to pay off.

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With average student debts now estimated to be in excess of £20,000, what hope is there that any of us will every be debt free, and ever have a chance to save for a deposit on our first home, or plan for our future’s and retirement?

More than a decade after inheriting a strong and growing economy, this government’s policies are unravelling at its feet. Worse still, the Brown-Darling partnership are throwing everything they have (or everything they can borrow, beg or steal) at rescuing their own reputation – whatever the long-term cost to the economy and our future.

Yet what did they do to prepare for this? The Labour government has presided over an economy that is now crumbling under the weight of red-tape and bureaucracy. Our tax system is one of the most complicated in the world, and the volume of tax regulation has more than doublled since Labour came to power. Millions face loosing their jobs, and graduates (encouraged and promised a better life by this government) are finding it impossible to find work. Labour have destroyed the hopes of a generation, and crippled them with debt in the process.

Just this week I was out with friends from University, and it struck me how difficult the employment market has become. Brown constantly throws out figures in the Commons of 500,000 vacancies in the UK, yet where are these jobs? My (frankly, more intelligent) graduate friends are now working voluntary roles to boost their CV, while picking up occasional shifts in pubs, restaurants and local supermarkets.

Labour have missold a promise to a generation of young people, who bought into a ‘buy-now-pay-later’ economy, on the promise of a good education and a good job at the end of it.

A promise Labour have more than failed to deliver.

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Combine your individual share of government borrowing (around £21,500 at the time of publication), with personal borrowing or student debts and young people in Britain today are now starting out their professional lives with more than £40,000 of debt – a debt that is growing every day.

We desperately need responsible government to deliver fiscal and economic prudence; a government that will release the shackles from business to create ‘green jobs’ in a diverse economy; a small government that will deliver a lower taxes and encourage saving. We need a new government, in style and name, to save our generation.

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