Honestly, Gordon

20 June 2009

The Spectator on Gordon Brown's dishonesty over public spending

Mr Darling, the still-Chancellor, concedes that economies are on the way. ‘I have always been clear,’ he told the Financial Times on 12 June, ‘that, just as we support the economy now, in the medium term we have got to live within our means and I set out a clear commitment to halve the deficit over a five-year period.’ But the PM and Ed Balls — the man Brown wanted to supplant Darling at the Treasury — persist with the Lie Direct. Labour ‘invests’, the Tories ‘cut’. That was the message that won the 2001 and 2005 elections, they believe: why should it not bring victory again in 2010? Like the Bourbons, the Brownites have learned nothing and forgotten nothing.

It was an article of faith for the Tory modernisers when David Cameron became leader in 2005 that the party would stick to Labour spending plans — initially, at least. That pledge was a necessary part of the so-called ‘decontamination’ process: Mr Cameron’s highly successful strategy to persuade swing voters that Conservative motives are benign. But there are good reasons, post-crash, to pursue a quite different approach — as the shadow chancellor is indeed doing.

First, it is authentically Conservative. As Dr Johnson rightly said, ‘a Tory does not wish to give more real power to government’. So a Conservative administration should always have a predisposition to rein in public spending rather than to increase it.

Second, it is honest. The voters know that the country is horribly in debt, and they do not like it. That is not to say that the public is clamouring for spending cuts. But — since there must be belt-tightening — it is self-evidently preferable that the work be done by honest policy-makers rather than dishonest propagandists. The coming election will be about competence, but it will also be about character. Cameron and Osborne are right to treat the voters as adults — and Brown and Balls are wrong to think that Labour will not pay a price this time for treating us all as fools.

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Christopher Chantrill

June 18th, 2009 6:55pm Report this comment

Presumably the "Tory cuts" line will help Labour with the voters that are straying off to the BNP.

But for the Tories, the question is: what will the "precious people" think, the Lib-Dem voters they have so devotedly love-bombed for the last three years?

I'd say that if you are an enlightened, progressive sort of person, in 2009 you are ready to see an enlightened, progressive rationalization of public services. Nothing as nasty as "cuts," you understand.

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