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Sunday 7 September 2008

Gordon Brown vs David Cameron

Irwin Stelzer says that the sharp policy distinctions of the past are no more, but that the choice ahead of the voters is still one to relish. This is his audit of the scores so far

If that option seems too, well, anti-democratic, then it becomes necessary to make some informed guesses. Both Brown and Cameron are promising to expand the state. When Cameron pledges to devote a portion of the nation’s increasing income to the public sector, Brown attacks him for shortchanging the public services. So the choice on this issue is between the Tories, who will reserve part of Britain’s growing wealth for debt reduction and tax relief, probably in that order, and Labour, whose incoming leader thinks that such a hold-back constitutes starvation of the public sector. That is, after all, the only conclusion possible when Brown mislabels Cameron’s slower increase in spending as an actual cut in such spending — which it is, but only from the ever-higher level the Chancellor has in mind.

So Brown will spend and tax more than Cameron. Not necessarily (although in my view most likely) a bad thing, if accompanied by reforms that deliver value for money and prevent the state from overwhelming the individual. And Brown will not be writing on a clean slate: he will find it difficult to undo all the reforms Blair has wrought. But experience proves that reform is not his first priority, and suggests that he will hesitate to push reform further, since he has less faith than Blair in the ability of the individual to make healthcare and education decisions for himself. And surely no one believes that Brown will feel bound by a pension reform plan extracted from him by Blair, but to be implemented in the distant future, and then only if he decides that financial circumstances permit. Surely no one believes that Gordon Brown will end the steady ratcheting up of taxes, cease adding complexity to the system of taxation, or abandon credits and other devices that are at the core of his desire to move wealth from south to north, and from high- and middle-earners to those he deems more worthy. And surely no one believes that he will suddenly find the management skills to run a Britain that is awash with criminals who should be in the jails he has refused to fund, enduring a tax-credit fiasco largely of his making, and mired in a pensions crisis partly of his making.

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