Shadow chancellor Ed Balls did an effective job yesterday of demolishing the pretensions of Chancellor George Osborne.

He pointed out that the much-touted "economic recovery" is not being experienced by the unemployed - notably one million young people - or by most workers.

Most people will be worse off financially in 2015 than they were when this unelected coalition took office four years ago.

Since 2010, we have witnessed the biggest ever drop in real wages in Britain since records began.

Moreover, this is an unbalanced upturn fuelled in part by property price inflation. It is not based primarily on business investment, industrial growth and manufacturing exports.

Mr Balls mocked the risible notion that the Tories could represent the interests of workers and their families when this latest Budget confirms their commitment to the energy companies, City hedge funds and other Tory Party donors.

He punctured the vanity of a Chancellor who once proclaimed that he would eliminate Britain's public finances deficit by 2015-16 but whose policies have delayed the economic upturn that would have made that possible by three years.

Yet the shadow chancellor failed to set out the clear, bold alternative policies needed to secure sustainable, balanced and long-term growth based on modern technology and social justice. Indeed, he and the shadow cabinet have accepted the Tory-Lib Dem strategy in most of its essentials.

The last Labour government originally devised some two-thirds of the public spending cuts currently being implemented, including almost all of those in the construction sector.

Her Majesty's "official opposition" is already committed to carrying out Tory public spending plans in the year following any general election victory in May 2015.

Mr Balls also confirms that a Labour government will cap welfare spending over the next parliamentary term. Indeed, Labour wants to cram state pensions under the cap and set it in statutory concrete.

Yet in order to provide anything like full employment based on reasonably secure, productive and decently paid jobs, a future Labour government will have to address profound structural weaknesses in the British economy.

Reliance on investment allowances and similar incentives will not overturn British monopoly capital's preference for financial investment and speculation and property development, much of it overseas.

Only a financial transactions tax and controls over the movement of capital would do that.

Tighter regulation of Britain's bloated, corrupt and wasteful banking sector is no substitute for a stiff dose of public ownership so that state banks can direct funds into manufacturing, housing, small businesses and co-operative enterprises.

A freeze on energy prices is no substitute for renationalisation of gas, electricity and water so that domestic and business consumers pay fairer prices as the profits are directed into new and modernised capacity instead of shareholder dividends.

Public ownership of transport is also the only basis on which to secure the planning, co-ordination and investment necessary for economic and environmental survival.

A guaranteed jobs scheme funded by a bankers' bonus tax will do nothing to improve employment quality or sustainability. In fact, the funds should shrink rapidly as the bonus culture is stamped out.

Thus Business Secretary Vince Cable was able to exploit a weakness at the heart of Labour's spending plans, modest though they are. Where would the money come from?

The shadow chancellor ducked the obvious reply, although it would enthuse millions of electors between now and next May - reverse the tax cuts for big business, close down the tax havens under British jurisdiction and slap a wealth tax on the super-rich.