"I'd like to give you some of your money back," says Dave, "I really would. But I am a fiscal conservative, and mending that leaking fiscal roof must come first."
These guys are not fiscal conservatives!
Using the house analogy - when the credit cards are run up over the limit, and the roof is leaking, and you have a work-shy relative staying rent free in the basement. Here's what you do! You tell the work-shy relative to get a job and start contributing or move out! You go out and buy a tarp and fix it over the roof for the winter, you sit down with the wife and kids and TELL THEM no more credit cards, cash only. Get on Ebay and start selling the Nintendo Wii, Apple ipod and other luxuries, tell mother that the food budget is cut 25% starting today. Turn down the thermostat and unplug computers.
After six months you fix the roof, but you get the best deal you can.
Problem is the kids will hate you, the wife will be resentful, and who gives a F**k what the work-shy git thinks. You cannot be Mr nice guy when repossession is staring you in the face. eg Margaret Thatcher.
Any government budget can be cut 10% tomorrow without too much dislocation, that money can be returned to taxpayers who will spend it and expand the economy, resulting in more taxes. The key is not to increase the budget once it is under control.
All you need is someone to say ENOUGH, Dave and George are not those guys.
We miss you Maggie and Ron Reagan. Now they were fiscal conservatives.
Cascadian, Wat - everything you say is right, and if the Conservatives said it aloud now, it would guarantee a LABOUR victory in 2010.
The electorate have been infantilised, and in order to get back into power, the Tories will have to (much as I regret it) talk in baby language.
Can you imagine what would have happened if BoJo had campaigned on the line 'if elected, I would ensure the removal of that useless twerp Ian Blair'?
I take your point but neither you nor Cameron nor anyone else has any idea how bad the economy could be and whilst I agree that tax cuts could help the situation, I still back Cameron 100% in playing it safe and talking about principles rather than specifying exactly what takes he would deal with.
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Mike
You are absolutely right and the radicalism that we need to get us out of the current Labour-created mess is missing. But I think that we have to hope that sjm is also right in pointing out that to present the required radicalism now would not be accepted by a largely economically illiterate electorate. Labour's poison has spread too deep. With a Tory Government we will at least be debating with people that understand the arguments and we have to hope that the required radicalism is just being held at bay for electoral purposes. It's a gamble but I don't see any choice.
Phil
While I want to believe that cuts in spending will be things like "axing our old friends the management consultants, and slashing public sector advertising" I can't help but fear it will, in reality, be things like the provision of social services that get hit.
Wat,
You're right, but there is so much red ink all over the public finances that the likelihood is that there are going to have to be substantial spending cuts just to keep borrowing down, let alone for tax cuts. I agree that tax cuts are important, but in the short term, tax cuts just equal higher borrowing and higher borrowing is just deferred taxation...
I wasn't a fan of everything that Cameron said, but there were hints that he would be more radical than he was prepared to say explicitly. For example, whilst defending the NHS (not something I agree with), he did include a reference about making it answerable to its users. We all (including him, I'm sure) know that the only way this can happen is if there is choice, competition and if the funding is directed via users, not direct to the producers.
I'm not convinced that a freeze in council tax would work. Have you heard of the Washington Monument syndrome?
The overpaid and unelected local government would just slash public services, shrug their shoulders and say, "Nothing to do with us guv" and pass the blame. And keep their jobs, their vastly over-inflated salaries and gold-plated pensions.
With a friend who has 40 years service with the local Council (but isn't yet 60) and is just hoping to be made redundant, I have to be careful... Where, Wat, is the cut in public sector waste in this equation? Gershon didn't work, you know - probably made the public sector less efficient and brought in more consultants (contractors, actually, in some cases, but their companies are paid at far too high a rate). You don't make a moribund organisation reform itself by just kicking it up the arse, and you can't close this one down, even though it is bankrupt.
Where, also, is the effect of the influx of workers from the EU, and the return home of some of them, on this analysis?
Sorry people, but you just don't GET IT.
Britain has been unsuccessfully trying to finesse this problem since the end of the second world war when socialism really took hold. Ny Bevin was a good man with honourable ideas, but implementation of the welfare state has been a disaster.
Admit after 60+ years that your social welfare schemes are un-affordable.
When Britain is offered a real conservative choice, not just some wishy-washy conservative-lite, happy face, who believes in rooftop windmills you may get somewhere.
Go take a look at the list of government ministries, and list ten that could easily take a 25% cut without damaging core services, the rest get a 10% haircut. Thats a good start. Or muddle along until the IMF man gives you another visit.
Unless and until the conservatives espouse conservative policy, the electorate may as well vote NuLiebour its less painful and the result is the same.
As far as the electorate would not vote for this argument goes-how would you know? Nobody has tried it recently.
Mary - this is always a problem when there is a Conservative government. When squeezed a bit for cash, Labour-run local councils always, but always, cut high-profile stuff (teachers, police officers, refuse collection etc) and blame it on the government. This is quite deliberate, and deliberately political. Labour people are in my experience stuck in some kind of adolescent mind-frame, and politicize absolutely everything they touch, in a way that conservatives tend not to. Thus when there is a Conservative govt, Labour local councils automatically move into a "destroy the govt" mode. This was one of the reasons why (regretably) Mrs Thatcher ended up increasing the "centralization" of local govt.
You can always bank on Labour councils retaining the funding for the Lesbian Outreach Office Staff and the "5-a-day Officers" (and a bloated "planning" department), while they cut school dinners and the people who serve them. This is because they don't really care what happens to anybody: they only care about destroying a Conservative govt. It's tribal.
Lets cut aid to nations that don't need it. Be nasty Tories and look after ourselves..
Cascadian,
We do , indeed, 'get it', and I personally would like the public sector to be cut from taking over 40% of our income to rather less than 30%. The point, however, is what the next government could achieve in a reasonably short timescale.
Can I commend to you James Bartholomew's book "The Welfare State We're In"?
HJ - I fear time is not on your side.
The traders have smelled the weakness of central banking and have rushed the US into a bailout of unknown proportions, banks distrust banks, even unsophisticated investors are moving money to perceived offshore safe havens. They will now turn their eyes to Europe where your leaders are clueless and not capable of co-ordinating action. More banks will fall. There may be runs against weaker currencys. Soon Nuliebour will be announcing the banking equivalent of British Leyland- shudder.
This is not a time for timid government policy, nor is it a time for finesse.
Sorry to piss in your cornflakes, essentially we seem to agree on the medicine required just differ on the dosage.
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