Tuesday, February 28, 2006
The Triumph of Big Government
Excellent article in this weeks The Spectator - quoted in sections below - on the victory of big government in Britain. Its quite a boot in the face, even suggesting the situation may be so bad that the victory may be ultimate.
So if we accepted that the struggle for smaller government in Britain is truly lost, where does that leave us, and in particular the Tory party? Where do voters go to express support for smaller government when the major parties attempt to win elections by promising to outspend each other?
David Cameron has a tightrope to walk in this regard - how can he effectively balance the need for popularity and electoral support with the need to keep fundamental conservative policies on board?
New Labour has, then, entered its psephological promised land — where no party can win power on a platform of radical cutbacks in government. Worse, it has dragged the Tories with it. Rolling back the state, once the leitmotif of Conservatism, has become the mission that dare not speak its name.
[...]
Cameron’s present policy, drafted by the repentant Letwin, is that the Conservatives will ‘share the proceeds of growth’ between tax cuts and public spending — which, on close inspection, involves proposing no meaningful tax cuts at all. His view of the electoral landscape is similar to Blair’s. ‘I don’t suppose anyone gets up in the morning thinking, “I wish the state were smaller”,’ he declared during his leadership election — and, with those words, cemented the big-government consensus which Letwin shaped at the last election. Cameron has adopted Labour language, referring to health spending as ‘investment’ — in other words, a good thing of which there should be more. Like Brown, he plans only to moderate the growth of spending. Any talk of cutting spending has been banned, by high command.
[...]
Thatcher declared that New Labour was her greatest legacy and [Tony Blair] can step down knowing his victory has been just as profound: to have Cameron abandon the quest for small government and join him in pushing forward the frontiers of the state.
So if we accepted that the struggle for smaller government in Britain is truly lost, where does that leave us, and in particular the Tory party? Where do voters go to express support for smaller government when the major parties attempt to win elections by promising to outspend each other?
David Cameron has a tightrope to walk in this regard - how can he effectively balance the need for popularity and electoral support with the need to keep fundamental conservative policies on board?
# posted by Chris Hughes @ 3:07 pm 
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