The Conservative conference has an odd unreality about it and I think I know why .Until recently, I believe , the plan was to sell the Party the line that debt was so bad that tax cuts would have to be on hold . Cameron had warned about tax rises and it was hoped that there was some scope for more borrowing .This money was going to be spent on welfare new schools etc. in a socially radical Conservative Government’s first term .Having shifted the log jam start freeing up a naturally more Conservative country over time.
With debt and the calamitous effect of a slow down on tax receipts this plan simply cannot be intact. Top level meetings unavoidably must be about how to restore the country to something approaching solvency without distortion, slowdown, or political impasse.
In this hopeless climate sectional politics will start to predominate which is immensely to Browns advantage. It will, however, terrify all those who see themselves as losers in tax services equation. Brown is further from decimation but perhaps also from winning.The truth is we have to have cuts to services AND tax rises and those tax rise will have to be on groups who cannot afford them.There is quite a bit of waste in the system ,true ,but nowhere near enough. The lack of impact is mostly just the news ,but it must also be true that the Conservative brand has been prised from its core thinking . A Party expecting government, and with the complexion it has, has to be revising priorities and it has to be going on now
I detect in Labour absolutely no cognizance of the fact we are going bankrupt and this is something all Conservatives worry about a lot. Cameron can expect total support, we know it isn’t easy. We have had a pleasant disagreement between One nation Conservatives and New Labour marketeers. Now it will be a bitter fight for the life of the country with Brown’s union backed leftish Labour capitalizing on fear.The conference is talking about yesterday and through no fault of the participants is of little relevance or interest.
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11 comments:
I disagree. I think Cameron and Osborne have made quite a bit of noise about the steps that need to be taken to steady the ship.
Savings can be made.
Consultancy budgets, unbelievably highly paid salaries for largely unqualified officials within councils;PE this week a diversity officer for Newham on £125,000.
Advertising cuts across every council and government dept. Abolition of regional councils and special area groups. tthe Quangocracy [gulp!] could be decimated.
IT budgets and contracts and big spending pre announced junk like the ID card scheme and [the necessary,but unfortunately too costly]crossrail all reined in.
Sadly this will only amount to around £20 billion saving. As you say tax rises are inevitable.
With the chuckle brothers running up £40-£80 billion extra debt just this year a serious attack on spending must be made.
Public sector pensions and retirement age is definitely one area. Followed by public sector pay, police,nurses,teachers,social.
Benefits payments and long term disability is another.
Schools and hospital buildings rebuilding works another..
Brown's fantasy 3 million homes by the end of the week another.
Eco Towns, military equipment,Trident, road building and probably the necessary energy powerplant renewals will all need to be looked at again, and chopped down.
Like it or not the Tories are going to be painted with the blackest of blackwash as the nasty uncaring party who hit out at their class enemies and the disadvantaged.
closing hospitals,libraries, post offices,nursery places,schools, police stations all to come.
If NuLab couldn't afford them and shut them in the miracle years of Golden Brown, what possible chance do the Tories have in the locust famine times of call me Dave?
Brown should be made to sit with PWC/Deloitte/Ernst insolvency practice and go through the government's books line by line.
Then he should be dismissed from office and barred from being a Treasury official for 100 years.
Thats a good summary I think but I am not at all sure we can cut the armed services safely .I `m open to persuasion though
This I love ...
"Brown should be made to sit with PWC/Deloitte/Ernst insolvency practice and go through the government's books line by line."
Can I watch ?
BQ's list makes queasy reading. The intrusion of government into so many areas of life and without democratic answerability isn't even exhaustive, as he says. We aren't going economically bankrupt but politically bankrupt. The Conservatives are facing a period of transition where they push government provision back into its box. That doesn't mean there won't be what the Brownite regime calls front line services. They will be offered by entrepreneurs rather than tax-funded appointees.
Raedwald discussed a good example in the provision of child care for working parents being assaulted by the regime plans to offer government care for the under twos.
If Brownism could have its way there wouldn't be any area of the economy where non-government economic activity could take place.
Conservatives use government to provide what needs national levels of co-ordination and otherwise leave markets, appropriately regulated by sector, to get on and offer what people want to buy. Dismantling the Blair/Brown permanent power foundation, which is now generating mindset of its own, is going to be the purpose of the first Conservative term. Much of what they are proposing does just that. And the fact that the disaster of an economic situation that Brown has engineered, with debt stretching into our children's adult lives, makes it harder and drives some into clinging to the status quo, is no surprise and no deterrent.
Raedwald discussed a good example in the provision of child care for working parents being assaulted by the regime plans to offer government care for the under twos.
I have under twos and a one three, in Islignton the suppsed provision by the private sector wasnot all that great it is exceedingly pricey. the state Nursery did not fill the gap either.
This is actually a very difficult problem for manty people but it has not yet been solved by anyone
You are just bitter and twisted because you aren't here....
Twitter and bisted no less ...why I oughta... why I ougta
The point is, there is no reason for government economic intervention for those things the private sector will provide; they won't provide defence, so we have to do it collectively out of taxes.
But for a myriad of other things from nurseries to leisure centres where there is an established private sector, all government intervention does is to distort and corrupt the market.
If in 1997 the government had decided to run an airline to offer cheap fares to poorer people, does anyone seriously imagine that Easyjet or Ryanair would have got off the ground? No, we would have been paying billions subsidising BlairAir with £100 'cheap' flights to Spain.
Believe me, if the government keeps its nose out, firms will compete on price and drive costs down - including nurseries.
Raedwald the private sector does not guarantee a constant level of provision though and then there is the problem of costly regulation and those left out .
Additionally we do not start from where we would like to be but from where we are.
I hope to see the plans for Education developed and succesful as they have been elsewhere. I can see a case for extending the principle down to 2 year olds
You are a bit too radical for me ( he said adjusting his slippers and looking cautious )
Ah, Mr N. Everytime the purity of Hayek scares me a little I read a little Ralph Harris, who turns it from a sharp bluesteel blade into something so utterly commonsensical, comforting and above all English that I am enveloped in the warmth of pipe, slippers and tartan rug across my knees ...
The point is you can't care for people by just giving them stuff and doing things for them - you need to allow them to grow and blossom, establish their roots and be stable, and the opportunities to use their talents and labour and commitment to their families and children to make their lives better; Socialism saps healthy development, social mobility and the urge to grow like some malignant poison in the soil. The glory of our social garden will only burst into full joyous bloom when people have the freedom to make their own choices about their own lives; it takes struggle and energy for a bulb to send its leaves up through the winter soil to the glory of the sunlight, and not all make it. But how dreary and diseased and colourless that garden would soon become if the gardeners drilled paths through the soil to ensure that every bulb bloomed.
Oops. Too many garden metaphors. Must be the damn pipe.
Raedwald the market is inf9infinitely attactive by comparison to socialism but at heart I agree with David Cameron that the market is not king , people and the ties that bind them are pre-eminent .
The market is only a tool
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