It won't be enough to just say "sorry"

Rhoda Klapp

"And that the public prefer higher spending to being saddled with debt. "

I'm guessing you didn't quite mean that, for the public can have both spending and a massive debt with no problem at all.

Publius

I daresay Cameron is forced to speak 'ad captum vulgus'

What else is possible, with today's infantilised electorate, and with the BBC acting as the propaganda arm of Number 10?

Mike, Brighton

DC & co are still very worried about giving Brown a "Tory Cuts" electoral narrative to systematically lie about with the BBC as a fellow rider.

It's a timid electoral strategy and might not hold during the campaign especially if some "Howard Flight" incident happens. But sadly it's sensible politics. I'd like to believe the public and BBC are ready to hear the awful truth about the rotten state we are in and the need to balance the books through cuts in public spending. But I don't think they are.

Peter Buss

Have to say Fraser, that I thought he dealt with your question very well. What else could he reasonably be expected to say? How many unemployed will there be say in May 2010 - with the automatic stabilisers that figure will make a heck of a difference to total spend. Thats just one imponderable at the moment.There is just no way he - or you for that matter - can say what the deficit will be until much nearer the time. Please cut this guy just a bit of slack for a change.

Chuck Unsworth

So Fraser, you'd advocate enormous cuts in public spending? What then?

JONNY

Publius is right.
When Churchill said he had nothing to offer but 'blood, toil, tears and sweat', he wasn't within months of a General Election.

geoff

The debt thing was a nice line of attack while it was just about taking the government to task.

But no serious politician is going to go into an election offering tax rises or spending cuts just to pay off a bit more debt.

john problem

How one wishes Cameron would start punching. You know, hammering hard at Gordon and his lot. If ever an opposition was given a heaven-sent series of gorblimey gaffes from a government, it's this one. There's too much floating like a butterfly with Cameron, and not enough stinging like a bee. He'd better get tough and beat up on Gordon mercilessly, or the used-to-be labour party will get back again, on the votes of all the benefits claimants.

EML

I am hoping that Cameron will inch along to the position you want, Fraser.

Today he indicated a desire for a freeze on the BBC's licence fee. I guess he will see how this goes down with certain parts of the electorate and we will see a similar announcement on something else next week or the week after.

Cameron will not make any huge announcements in this direction until the Government has used up its Budget. Anything popular he says now will merely be copied in some form by Brown.

John Page

A control freak and a policy wimp.

How blessed are we.

Hannah

So Simon Heffer was right. Cam is Willie Whitelaw with an iPod.

We're doomed.

Kevyn Bodman

I didn't see all the press conference because SkyNews cut away.
But in what I saw what a disappointment he was.

He was asked about the thinking of Sir Liam Donaldson on alcohol pricing and he missed an open goal.

Here is what he should have said:
'We do not support the idea of increasing taxation on all drinkers because of the bahaviour of a few; indeed we firmly reject any solution of that kind.
The behaviours of binge-drinkers that are causing concern to the public are already offences; fighting and assault are crimes if the offender is sober or drunk.
Behaviour likely to cause a breach of the peace likewise.
We will police those behaviours and deal with the ofenders, but it will not be the policy of an incoming Conservative government to interfere with the market to the detriment of law-abiding citizens, nor to raise stealth taxes on alcohol sales.'

Et voila.

In that answer alone he could have set the Conservatives apart from Labour on the issues of tax and policing, and he could have helped people to infer that he is opposed to any government policy that treats innocent people as suspects or criminals.

To a follow-up question he could have said more about surveillance/ database/ travel logging, or he could have talked more about taxes.His choice, thinking on his feet, depending on the slant of the question.

It is true that my answer doesn't deal with the health concerns, but if there is a follow up on that then the line to take is that we will make sure that health effects are known, but we will not coerce citizens.

Instead of my model answer he prattled on about targeted tax rises on alcopops and strong cider.

I don't drink either of those, but I do drink; and every time I drink, I drink well past the amount that would make it safe to drive a car.
So I never drink and drive.
Neither do I fight, shout obscenities or vomit in the street.
There are tens of thousands like me, voters all.Taxpayers all.

Fraser is disappointed that Cameron hasn't torn up Labour's spending plans.
Me too.
If he can't do it now, if he can't show cleasr blue water now, when can he?

The Conservatives made a bad mistake electing Cameron as their leader.
They went for a young, telegenic candidate with good hair.
That is the way managers are picked in Dilbert books, and those books are satirical.
You elected the heir to Blair,and he is no good.

To defenders of Cameron who will say, 'but he must get elected first' my reply is if his policies, energy and robustness are as they appear to be now there is no point electing a Conservative government.

Come on Cameron, show some steel.

David Ossitt

Cameron replied that hasn’t given details on his plans.

Nor should he; Brown and Co would only try to pick through them in order to find fault.

Is it not bad enough that Brown will hand over an economy to the Tory's; that is one-hundred times worse than that handed over thirty years ago by the big buffoon of a chancellor Denis Healey.

The Tory's will not no the full extent of just how bad it realy is until they are in office.

Only then can they come clean and tell us how they will once again put our economy back to normal......

C Powell

For crying out loud, the huge public expenditure there has been in the last decade has largely been funded by stamp duty and taxes on bonuses and corporation tax. The first has gone, the second is vanishingly small and the third will be severely reduced. So the money won't be there to maintain existing spending let alone going on increasing it. So there will have to be cuts in public spending, as well as tax increases on everyone - not the rich - as the left likes to delude itself, and a huge debt for the foreseeable future. The standard of living for everyone, including the public sector, is going to be much worse than we've been used to. The sooner we realise this and plan accordingly the better.

It seems to me to be sensible politics for the Tories to get people used to this idea rather than cling to the silly and deluded notion that a few tweaks here and there and all will be for the best.

Trevors Den

The fact is that we will get tory cuts tory cuts peddled by labour and their PR dept, the BBC.

The point is that when the tories finally get 'to see the books' then that will be the opportunity.

The other reality is that 'cuts' are easy to talk about but virtually impossible to implement.
We are already seeing massive cuts in what this govt were projecting. Will they be able to implement them? The tories will be doing very well if they can when in govt never mind inventing new ones of their own.
Check just how well Thatcher succeeded in reality.

Fraser - you are being naive. Once spending is out of the bottle it is virtually impossible to put it back. This has been Browns supreme folly. His utter and complete catastrophe.

Cameron is in fact being totally honest.

The other big problem is how to get tax revenues UP and do more with less.

Ahead of us - we have years of a relentless squeeze of spending and constant encouragement of enterprise and investment to give a tax base based on genuine productivity.

No magic bullet or glib soundbite to save us. Get real Fraser.

Fraser Nelson

Peter Buss and Chuck, i'd have said "all bets are off" and "no promises until we see the books" etc. And taken this "sorry" moment as a chance to wipe the slate clean. Instead he will have to delay this to a later moment. But he can't avoid it. It's just storing up another headache for him. As Geoff says, he needs to switch from opposition mode into government-in-waiting mode round about now.

Also, honesty should be Cameron's motif. If he has no plans to cut debt, he shouldn't hit that he will deal with a crisis that he will, alas, have no choice but to compound.

John Moss

There must be scope in annual spending of £648bn to make savings without affecting delivery of services.

There is also the potential to exploit value in assets like the £400bn social housing sector.

Real welfare reform changes the parameters against which benefits will be paid, reducing them substantially if, for example, benefits are reduced where work is refused and migrant labour has to pay a £2,000 bond before accessing services.

It is right to say nothing of specific policies, but achieving real savings through reform will allow spending to fall without harm and deliver reduced debt - and one hopes, eventually, tax cuts.

Johnathan Pearce

I very much fear that Cameron and his colleagues are still terrified of the old "Tory cuts" lies that Labour used to come out with. Remember, under the Lady, the Tories only managed to arrest spending growth, not actually cut it. And for that, Mrs Thatcher was likened to the devil. Just imagine what would have occurred had spending really been cut.

I fear that a lot of DC's recent comments are "theatre" rather than a sign of anything more fundamental in the sense of trying to shrink the state. Please prove me wrong, Mr Cameron.

seb

Publius and john problem

Brown's guaranteed a core vote of about thirty per cent. The electorate is infantilised. When Brown comes up with what he thinks we'll assume is a tax cut in the next few weeks, there will be enough idiots about to give him yet another Brown Bounce in the polls. Will hammering away at the lies spun by Kirkcaldy's Leading Autist make the least impression on Tribal Labour or the hordes of twerps who think you can be, simultaneously, in horrific debt and a binge borrower?

TGF UKIP

Poor old Fraser, I could almost feel sorry for you. But I don't, so long have you acted as an apologist for Cameron.

Even so, after today it must be becoming increasingly difficult for you to cling to your ugly duckling theory of Cameron - that underneath those ugly duckling SocDem feathers there lurks a beautiful conservative swan just waiting to bust forth at just such an opportunity as he was given today.

What I do find most depressing about this post and the comments provoked so far is the number of Coffee Housers who seem so willing to extend so much tolerance towards Cameron, begging for him to be "cut some slack" as if he were some recent appointee. He ain't, he's been "Leader" for over three years now and has never once departed from the path of progressive social democracy.

Nor contrary to the assertions of some Coffee Housers (some of whom I really would have thought would have known better) is his chosen path of tax, borrow and spend dictated by voter demand. As Fraser will confirm, if he so wishes, the polls for over twelve months now have shown consistent two thirds majorities in favour of the proposition that government spends, wastes and taxes too much.

More than time that you Fraser and a number of Coffee Housers really faced up to just who and what Cameron is and accepted that if you really do want to see a trustworthy conservative government in power in this country again then the last party you should be thinking of vorting for is the Cameron Tories.

john miller

This is all a bit unreal. The Tories only have a 10% lead in some polls. This, when they are up against - well, we all know what they are up against.

Blair, Campbell and Mandelson stomped on John Major until he was merely a stain on the floorboards. The very thought of a consensus by one of the triumvirate would have the other two tearing his flesh from his bones. But Cameron does the worst thing possible. He thinks it statesmanlike.

Well, it just won't do. Every time he agrees with something Brown says he reinforces the inertia contained in that 10% lead in the polls.

For instance, whether it is right to try to borrow and spend our way out of trouble, the policy is counter intuitive. And that is enough for 98% of the population.

So get out the pickaxe and start hewing Cameron. Its never too early to destroy a reputation. Ask Mr Major.

Trevors Den

Spending cuts??

Lets see now ... spending ... on what. Scotch mist?

What do we really spend money on. What do governments spend money on?

Jobs. They employ people. Leaving aside the fact that the public sector is less productive than the private sector - cutting public sector jobs will add to unemployment benefits and will not dramatically cut spending. Not in the short term.

Hence my point that once spending genie is out of the bottle it is difficult to put back. People who glibly talk about cutting spending should wake up. We need to cut public spending but doing it is a long hard task.

Verity

John Page - Well-observed.

Kevyn Bodman - I couldn't have put it better myself, so I won't try. I endorse every word you wrote.

Cogito Ergosum

Angela Merkel fought her last election on the slogan, "Politik ohne Lüge" -- politics without lies. Let the Conservatives borrow that one!

luke

I hope the irony is not lost on people.

Fraser argues for spending cuts to allow borrowing to come down, and people say dont worry Cameron will do this, but cant say it because of Labour "tory cuts" lies.

Surely, guys, if he is actually going to cut spending, they arent lies are they?

JONNY

"if you really do want to see a trustworthy conservative government in power in this country again then the last party you should be thinking of vorting for is the Cameron Tories."

Er. Er. Er. Er.
Did you mean vote UKIP by any chance TGF?

Tiberius

Good to see some posters are able to see the political advantage of not fighting the election campaign a year early.

Fraser - I do think Cameron knows what he's doing.

John Page

Thanks, Verity. I agree, Kevyn Bodman is right.

The Tories should be out of sight, yet they are only some 10% ahead. Cameron is a Blairite and Osborne is a lightweight.

TGF, I agree with you too, how thankless it must be to be an apologist for those two.

Victor, NW Kent

Labour need no word from Cameron to paint him as a devil who will destroy public services altogether. It is their only remaining weapon.

Any thinking person must know by now that the cost of repairing both a broken economy and a broken society will be great. Nothing is to be gained by feeding the voters despair whilst they are starving for hope.

TGF UKIP

JONNY, for the umpteenth time on this website I will emphasize that I am not a UKIP activist and would dearly love to be able to vote for a Conservative Party that was not ashamed and afraid to live up to its own name. However, as the only conservative party currently in the UK I am grateful to UKIP for providing an alternative repository for my vote.

Let no one be under any illusion, though, if the Cameron Tories do win the next election it will prolong the rule of social democracy in this country for at least the next decade and probably much longer than that as the Tory Left will use its victory to claim and "prove" that the Tory Party can only win elections in modern Britain by running and being a One Nation social democrative party.

On one matter though Fraser, I am after this latest episode going to take your advice from a few months back.

Archie

Can anyone give me a reason - and if you lot can't then we're truly doomed - why it is impossible to have the leader of the so-called opposition hammering away at the manifold deficiencies of this pathetic government AND not revealing future plans until it has "seen the books"?

MrJones

If he's completely honest about spending then Al Pravda will use it to hammer him.

Tiberius

Will we be able to recognize your new monika, TGF?

Hugh

Is it really so hard to tell the truth is the UK today? If cameron can't bring himself to spell out reality when he's in opposition he'll never have the courage to do so once he's in power.

Robert

I have the perfect formula to wake 'em all up; vote BNP. You will be in somewhat dodgy company, but there is safety in (very, very large) numbers.

Fraser Nelson

TGF, I agree - how will we know you? Or are you already masquerading as "verity"?