Inside George Osborne’s war room

Matthew Quirk

Dear Sir, So George Osborne admits that the public has no firm idea about what a Conservative government would do – or at least he fails to rebut the accusation. Two weeks ago I received a standard letter ostensibly sent by the local Conservative Association, but clearly approved by Central Office, asking me to say what issues are really important to me. It was a shining example of the barren thinking within the party. Every issue mentioned is indeed important, but every issue is a symptom not a cause. In the Speccy you have written a good piece upon the new political class. It is a commonplace that getting people to come out and vote is really difficult. People don´t want to vote because they see a political class that aims only to perpetuate itself, while muttering platitudes about symptoms, not causes. How can you seriously want to vote for people of any party who: a. ensure they have inflation-proofed pensions at the taxpayers´ expense when others don´t b. allow the Inland Revenue to tax people retrospectively? c. allow our judiciary to be subordinated to a European Court, so that it can no longer be independent of the Executive, Parliament and the Monarch? d. maintain a fiction that the new self-amending European Treaty is different from the proposed Constitution? e. allow Scottish MPs to vote on English issues, without a reciprocal right for English MPs? f. allow such a complication of the tax laws that not even specialists understand them anymore – (and anyway, why make them so difficult in the first place so that a taxpayer needs a specialist?). g. exhort people to "take responsibility" when they create regulators and fragment organisations so that the lines of responsibility are completely unclear – DEFRA, NHS, FSA and the Bank of England are but a few examples. How laughable is it that there has to be a Regulator to deal with hospital cleanliness? h. pour billions into the public services with so little to show for it? i. allow laws to be made by instruments in Parliament rather than after detailed debate What are the root causes of the dissatisfaction engendered by each of these points? a. that citizens can no longer even be seen to be equal under the law b. that no citizen can plan his business or personal affairs within a clear framework of taxation c. that elected representatives don´t understand what it is they are legislating about d. that elected representatives cannot exercise any control over government organisations e. that incompetence is built not only into government but also into political parties f. that politicians have given up the fight and "gone native" People don´t want to hear about symptoms anymore – they want the root causes dealt with – in short to ensure that government is done properly and clearly, and that what it cannot do properly or clearly is handed out to someone else who can, and who is very clearly accountable for doing so. That´s what I´m hearing on the doorsteps, and the party that gets to grips with that will get the votes.