Cameron: ‘What you need is thoughtful radicalism’
3 October 2009
The Tory leader talks to Fraser Nelson about Afghanistan, art and why he is taking his time in forging a new Tory revolution. He will not make the mistakes of either Blair or Heath
This, of course, is shorthand for turning the public finances around. We speak the day before Gordon Brown proposed a new law that would force the next government (one presumes the Prime Minister doesn’t have his own one in mind) to halve the deficit within four years. For Cameron, this is not enough. ‘Then you’d be back to where Denis Healey was in 1976,’ he says. So he will cut faster — at a rate yet undetermined. ‘But I want to be realistic — both for what a government can achieve, but also realistic in terms of taking the country with me.’ And it is this latter point which is causing all the problems.
Mr Cameron is planning two sweeteners, to make the medicine of cuts more pal- atable. One is to protect the NHS budget and swing the axe elsewhere. The other is to implement Mr Brown’s proposed 50p tax on the highest earners — a tax that will, according to the Institute of Fiscal Studies, lose the Exchequer about £800 million a year as the richest move themselves (or their money) elsewhere. Why on earth, I ask him, does he think this tax will raise revenue when all independent research suggests otherwise?
‘You don’t have to persuade me that high marginal tax rates are a bad idea — I think they are a fantastically bad idea,’ he starts, before citing Nigel Lawson’s 1988 Budget, which lowered the top rate of tax and thereby increased the revenue collected from the richest. ‘The sort of tax system that I believe in is one that’s effective in raising revenue — rather than one that is trying to make a particular point.’ Precisely so. So why, if this is true, will he not reject the 50p tax? Is this not a test of Mr Cameron’s principles?
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Fatbloke on tour
October 1st, 2009 9:13am Report this commentTrevor
Your background is coming to the fore.
Your interview is straight out of the Chairman Dave and the Laptop Loyal school of journalism. If only you had taken more time to learn from Glenn Gibbons and less time being Andrew Neil's latest party boy find from the GUU gene pool.
Prepared Radicalism = Compassionate Conservatism = Cheap words to try and make the self interest more acceptable.
Interesting list of priorities, nothing about growth / jobs / progress just a need to cut the deficit.
This isn't neo conservative economics this is straight orthodoxy missing out the 80 years experience that proved it to be wrong.
Welcome to Dave's World, where Nigel Lawson is king and the UK will be first into a recession and last out.
And this is progress.
DavidDP
October 1st, 2009 9:25am Report this comment"tax that will, according to the Institute of Fiscal Studies, lose the Exchequer about £800 million a year "
Garbage in, garbage out. Change the assumptions, you'll change the result. Next.
Simon Stephenson
October 1st, 2009 11:56am Report this commentDavidDP : 9.25am
To write as you do you've obviously got the definitive valuations of all the consequences of bringing in the 50p tax rate. Care to share them with us?
Stuart Bertram
October 2nd, 2009 4:52pm Report this commentWhat people like Fatbloke (is that really you Mr Prescott?) fail to appreciate is that growth, jobs and progress will never come, at least not sustainably, through government spending - that will only ever be achieved through a low tax economy free from government interference.
The root of all the problems created by GB and, with the exception of Afghanistan, the common link among the issues being prioritised by DC, is our addiction to government and complete abdication of individual responsibility. GB's stealth taxes allowed him to preted that we lived in a low tax economy while overseeing a massive growth in public spending (with seemingly proportionately inverse benefit for the taxpayer) - and aren't we paying for it now. One in five of the workforce is on the government payroll, or more accurately on the payroll of the other four. Forty three per cent of the UK's GDP is government spending. So half the output of the real economy is used to support the other half. That is no way to create wealth, jobs and progress.
Apart from the unsustainable economics what this does is create a complete barrier to reform. While 20% of the working population (and all of the non-working) are dependent on the state there will always be a vested interest for both electorate and elected in maintaining large government and no politician is going to advocate the real change we need - how many turkeys ask their fellow turkeys to vote for Christmas?
While I take DC's point that if you try to do too much too soon you can end up doing nothing I do hope that at heart he realises that to fix our broken economy, broken government and broken society we need a fundamental evaluation of what our government does for us and what we as individuals should do for ourselves, not the Morton's Fork currently offered to the electorate - I'm afraid that 10% just doesn't cut it.
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