The most interesting line in the PM’s press conference was Brown’s argument that, precisely because it is “funded”, the Tories’ latest tax proposal does not represent a fiscal stimulus. Gordon is now positively flaunting his jilting of Prudence, scorning the Tories because they are trying to cling to the fiscal principles – “stability”, “responsibility” etc – which were the hallmarks of his decade in Number Eleven .
The basis of the initial Cameroon strategy was to edge the Conservative Party towards the economic orthodoxy of the Blair-Brown years with the caveat that the Tories would “share the proceeds of growth” between tax cuts and public spending.
This ideological consensus has been blown to pieces by the present crisis and the increasingly anxious response of the political class to it. The Conservative Party is now positioned as the party of fiscal prudence: all tax cuts are presented as “funded”, and monetary policy rather than fiscal stimulus firmly identified as the route out of a downturn.
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