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Change you can believe in

Wednesday, 9th January 2008

The Spectator reflects on the parallels between British and American politics.

The difficulty for the PM is that, unlike Sen. Obama, Mr Cameron is beginning to roll out policy ideas that give weight and substance to his claim to be an agent of change. The Conservatives’ proposals for inheritance tax cuts at the party’s conference last year were a significant factor in Mr Brown’s cancellation of the planned autumn election. To an extent that not even the Tory leadership had predicted, the proposed cuts struck a chord with voters unimpressed by the value for money Labour’s tax increases have delivered, and freshly receptive to policy ideas that encourage aspiration and personal independence. Likewise, Michael Gove’s proposals for education reform speak to the public’s growing weariness with command-and-control centralisation, and a desire for diversification and meaningful parent power in the schools system.

This week, Mr Cameron unveiled a Green Paper on welfare reform which, if implemented, would transform the £100 billion benefits system. Again, the proposals are well-suited to a new context. Voters see migrants filling jobs that Britons are unwilling to take, and conclude that the welfare state is being abused by claimants perfectly able to work: ‘the culture of deliberate worklessness’, in the words of the Green Paper.

This is an idea whose time has come, and has as its objective more than long-term savings to the taxpayer (essential as that is). As the Tory blueprint says: ‘welfare reform is less a question of rules and regulations, systems and procedures; it is more a question of culture and values’.

This is an excellent sentiment, backed up by firm ideas to involve the private sector in the delivery of ‘workfare’ schemes, to set time limits on benefits, and to withdraw the dole from those who refuse to co-operate in the new system. If Mr Cameron sticks to these principles, he will deserve to be called a Tory radical — rather than the spin-obsessed pragmatist some feared him to be when he was elected leader in 2005. This week, he put flesh on the bones of the Obama slogan: change you can believe in.

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A child of our time

From the economic and psychological bedlam of the global downturn has emerged a particularly dangerous false dichotomy: namely, that there is somehow a choice for ministers over the next few years between economic reconstruction and the repair of Britain’s broken society, and that the government (whether Labour or Conservative) must prioritise the former at the expense of the latter.

Diary

Anne Robinson

The daughter and I spent the last few days before the American election in Arizona.

Politics

Fraser Nelson

Fraser Nelson reviews the week in politics

The Spectator's Notes

Charles Moore

‘A money-financed tax cut is essentially equivalent to Milton Friedman’s famous “helicopter drop” of money.’ So said Ben Bernanke, now the chairman of the Fed, in a speech about how to ward off the ‘extremely small’ chance of deflation, which he delivered in 2002.

Diary of a Notting Hill Nobody

Tamzin Lightwater

Tamzin Lightwater's unique take on the week

The Republicans are where the Tories were in 1997

James Forsyth

This is bad news for the Conservatives, who have always feasted on US right-of-centre ideas, says James Forsyth. But the GOP can learn from the Cameroons

Want to cut taxes? First cut spending. Here’s how

Fraser Nelson

After a week of clamorous competition between the parties over tax cuts, Fraser Nelson offers a guide to paying for them: a programme of spending cuts that would preserve core services but shave off the fat of the Brown years. All that is needed is political will