In private, many Tories have whispered that the debt crisis is an opportunity to get the size of the state—which has grown faster here than in any other OECD country in recent years—back under control. Today on the Andrew Marr Show, David Cameron endorsed this analysis:
“I think you know we mustn’t see this effort at getting public spending down and getting the budget balance, we mustn’t see it as some dreadful catastrophe. We’ve got to see it as a big opportunity to deliver public services in a different and a better way, and to totally reform our government and put people back in control. In a way those two challenges we talked about at the beginning of the programme – how angry people are at the political system and the huge concern about public spending – they are linked because one of the reasons people are so angry is they feel I’m not in control of my government. I’ve got… You know 15 different sorts of people can snoop into my house… ANDREW MARR: Okay. DAVID CAMERON: …or film me taking my children to school and I’m not in control of this and it makes me mad as it were. ANDREW MARR: Sure. Right, let’s… DAVID CAMERON: Now link that to public spending control and you’ve really got an agenda.”
It is comments like this that offer some assurance that Cameron will be as radical as he needs to be. At the least, it suggests that his instincts are firmly on the right. Indeed, the whole post-bureaucratic age agenda is impeccably Hayekian even if it hasn’t been sold in those terms.
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