Politics | 4 April 2009

For the last 15 years, a four-letter word has terrified and paralysed the Conservative leadership: cuts. When it has been deployed by Gordon Brown on the electoral battlefield, the Tories have had no defence. Even after they surrendered and signed up to Labour’s spending plans, Mr Brown still accused them of planning ‘deep and painful cuts’. It is, as it happens, a charge entirely without foundation. Even now, the only people openly saying that state spending is too high are a bunch of supposed oddballs: Norman Tebbit, John Redwood — and 72 per cent of the British public.

The last group has crept up almost entirely undetected upon Westminster — which is so often the last place to realise which direction the rest of the country has taken. An old orthodoxy still reigns in SW1: that it is cruel and heartless to want cuts, and that higher state spending is the non-negotiable priority of modern, compassionate Britain. Yet outside the Westminster village, the public is growing increasingly incensed about the way ministers are spending as if the party will never end — from the expenses claimed by Jacqui Smith to cover her husband’s cinematic tastes to the NHS supercomputer.

As no party formally proposes spending cuts, the issue tends not to be raised in opinion polls — so The Spectator decided to make its own inquiries. Snapshot surveys often give a deceptive answer to such questions, as people’s minds change in the course of an election campaign as they are subjected to the case for and against. So we commissioned PoliticsHome to use its new technique: so-called deliberative polling. This involved asking a carefully balanced group of 1,406 people various questions, then asking them to consider the arguments — then asking the question again.

When asked if the government should conduct a new ‘stimulus’ in the next budget, our respondents were sceptical: 56 per cent against and 32 per cent in favour.