Britain needs reform

This week’s spending review confirms that where there should be conviction, there is only confusion; where there should be vision, only a vacuum. The country is on the road to higher taxes, poorer services and a decaying public realm, with the bandits of the bond market lying in wait to extract their growing take from our declining share of global wealth.

The Chancellor approached this spending review with her credibility already undermined. Promises not to raise taxes on working people translated into a tax on work itself which has driven up unemployment. A pledge to put growth first has been accompanied by changes to employment law that make the labour market more rigid and the cost of hiring workers commensurately greater. A party which excoriated the Conservatives for letting prices rise has pumped billions into public-sector wage hikes and seen inflation increase again. An apparent determination to take difficult decisions to control spending by removing pensioners’ winter fuel payments has crumbled in the face of backbench pressure. The farcical retreat has only emboldened those in Labour who want to drive us deeper into debt.

The NHS and the Ministry of Defence are the most hopeless spending addicts but they are not the only departments to have wrung more from the Treasury than the nation can afford – or the Chancellor indicated she wanted. Ed Miliband has shown that, whatever other criticisms may be directed at him, he is brilliant at getting high on the taxpayers’ supply – with generous subsidies for domestic decarbonisation and billions for the most expensive energy the markets can provide. The Department for Education has secured millions more to get the state to pay for families’ food. Angela Rayner has extra billions, not to build new houses but to buy existing homes for the state.