Department for Tax and Spend
Ahead in the polls, behind in ideas
After a bumper weekend of massive poll leads and oblique policy statements, David Cameron is to show just how little work has really gone into Tory tax planning by dusting off the 2005 David James review of public spending:
David Cameron is to salvage a Tory plan to cut government spending by £12bn that formed the centrepiece of Michael Howard's 2005 general election campaign.
In a sign of his determination to cut taxes, Cameron has authorised his shadow Treasury team to dust down the so-called James review of 2004-05, which identified £12bn of potential government savings.
Dusting off a policy that many in the party link directly to Howard's losing the 2005 election (as the Guardian points out, many believe that they lost Taunton to the LibDems because of local recommendations in the James report) won't help Cameron in the blogosphere this morning. What he needs is a tax-and-spend "big idea". He hasn't got one yet.
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1 Comments
Tax-and-spend big idea? No, no, no, that's fighting Labour's electoral ground. What he needs is a big idea, but one that is conservative but in a way that people like. He needs a modern-day council house sell-off, which was the last conservative idea ordinary people could buy into. It's sad that small-c conservatives have to look back to Thatcher, it makes me feel like one of those horribly deluded "In our day..." type of people (hell, I was only born 85), but that's what the Tories need. And even after 11 years in the wilderness they don't have the intellectual vitality to provide it (unless their mooted educational reforms become the backbone of their manifesto).