The following were the words in a note from Reginald Maudling, the departing TORY chancellor, in 1964 to his Labour successor...
"Good luck, old cock.... Sorry to leave it in such a mess."
So the near-identical Liam Byrne comment right-w(h)ingers constantly draw attention to from the time of the 2010 election was merely a copy of that, though his was rather more polite!
As I've pointed out here before, making a u-turn when you realise you are wrong is a perfectly reasonable form of behaviour. However, the type of u-turn the current government - I use the term loosely - is like the man driving along with a companion. As they approach a roundabout, the companion, who has the map, says, "You want the third exit here." "Naaah," the know-all driver responds and goes on to the fourth exit. At the first road-sign on his new route, he grasps that he is wrong and has to correct matters by making a u-turn or taking some other avoidance routine.
To relate that scenario to the present plethora of coalition u-turns one need consider only the plain fact that many economists pointed out immediately that government economic plans would lead to a double-dip recession and where exactly are we now? You gorrit...in a double-dip recession! In other words, they are the typical know-all driver at the roundabout who fails to listen until it is too late.
When somneone corrects his OWN mistakes, a u-turn is fine; when he makes mistakes despite being told in advance that they ARE mistakes and only THEN u-turns, he's a plonker!
Of course, when Labour was in power, any policy modification was dubbed a "humiliating climb-down" by the opposition. What makes these different now?