I’ve read and re-read Cameron’s speech on the economy, hoping that I had somehow missed the radical message to answer Gordon Brown. I have given up.
Britain is facing a tsunami of unemployment, two years of recession if we’re lucky and what do the Tories have to say? They’ll set up a new quango, and try to tinker with council tax. We had new phrases: instead of “irresponsible capitalism” we’re told there will be “responsible free enterprise”. His dreadful “social responsibility” phrase is making a comeback in the form of “economic responsibility” and remains just as vacuous as a concept.
Much of the detail appears worryingly wrong-headed. Cameron seems to say he’d stop another asset bubble by setting limits on how much individual banks can lend. His “Debt Responsibility Mechanism” – a gimmicky name for adjusting bank capital-to-borrowing ratios – is being held up as a method of controlling the money supply. So you’d ration debt, rather than adjust interest rates? “It will be a fundamental and far-reaching reform of monetary policy,” says Cameron. I heard another verdict from a very senior (and economically-literate) Tory who described this idea as “not just nonsense, but nonsense on stilts.”
Osborne’s critics argue that the Cameroons are economically disadvantaged because they have purged themselves of the monetarist economics which Brown convinced them was a great thought crime. This, runs the theory, makes them unable to understand what has happened in the last ten years where uncontrolled money supply created a debt and asset bubble. It, the critics contend, has stripped them of the intellectual self-confidence needed for radical measures.
I disagree. The Cameroons are genuine Tories, even if they try to disguise it. I also take the view, often unpopular amongst CoffeeHousers, that George Osborne is astute and will – like America – do the right thing in the end, after exhausting all the other options. There is good stuff here – Cameron makes a good critique of Brown as I have been calling for – but it is too richly mixed with gimmicks and soundbites. Today’s speech may yet get a good write-up: it’s a slow news day, and the media are tiring of the Brown-The-Saviour narrative.
But there is not a clear agenda for action here that sufficiently contrasts with Brown’s. Ordinary voters fear for their jobs and savings, and don’t care that Cameron intends to set up an Office for Budget Responsibility. I would have advised Cameron to keep quiet until he had a proper message. In my political column this week, I note Enoch Powell’s dictum that the electorate like a tune they can whistle. Brown understands this. Cameron today gave us lots of notes, but it sounded like two cats fighting on a piano keyboard. This won’t do. Cameron needs a tune – and fast.
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