At the bloggers’ lunch yesterday (thanks Sam, Rishi and Craig!) I was asked how I was going to cope with the cuts that any government is going to have to make in the next Parliament. I think the person asking was of the often-expressed view that I belong in another party…
My answer was a bit rambly but went something like this: I am a Conservative. I don’t like waste, I don’t like spending for the sake of it, I think people spend their own money better than any government can. There are some things government has to do, but there are lots that it shouldn’t. There are lots of things that can be funded by the state but don’t have to be delivered by it. And that if we don’t have a functioning, stable, growing and sustainable economy everything else is moot anyway.
If the Conservatives win the election, I do think the Treasury figures are going to be frightening. I think there are going to be some very unpleasant decisions to make. But I also had talked with someone who was asking why, given all that has gone wrong for Labour, the Tories weren’t further ahead. There is the issue of trust in politics and politicians generally – after the surge of optimism in Blair’s government, people have been massively let down again.
I’ve been struggling to really articulate this, but here is my take: the age of austerity is being forced upon us all. The longer that Brown’s plans involve spending and raising taxes, the harder it is going to be for anyone to return our economy and our society to what it should be. Given that, if we win, there is a certain amount that we will be able to blame Brown for. But there comes a point at which we will have to say, yes we have made things better. And in order to get to that point, we need to tell people why the pain that is coming is worth it. It comes down to giving people a reason to vote for us, in order that we have the mandate to do what is necessary.
It’s a difficult one to really get right – too optimistic and people aren’t ready for the changes that need to be made. Too gloomy, and even I might question why we would vote Conservative and bring all that pain upon ourselves – surely we should stick with what we know?
I think the Tories can get it right. I’m not sure they have managed to say it right quite yet.
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The danger is that we exaggerate the ability of a government to deliver immediate and extensive cuts.
The debt Labour have left us with is comparable to that we faced after the second world war, and that debt was only paid off a couple of years ago. It will take us a similar amount of time to dig ourselves out of the hole we’re in now, so why not be honest about it ?
More importantly, and less gloomily, are the cost neutral changes we can make to improve people’s lives. Think of Gove’s ideas for freeing up schools, for instance, or some of IDS’s proposals to help people out of the welfare trap.
Rather than focus on the cuts we (and a dozen subsequent governments) will have to make, we should be focusing on these positive things we want to do.
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