In a particularly intelligent article in today’s Telegraph, Frank Field declares that the forthcoming general election will be wholly different from all other post-war elections, in that the parties will be judged on their proposals to cut the public deficit, and not on how they plan to “bribe voters with their own money”.
Pointing out that the recession has detroyed five per cent of our national wealth, Field observes that, even when the economy is growing again, there will be a monstrous gap of £80 billion between revenue and expenditure by 2013.
So the rules of the game have changed, says Field:
Here is the basis of the next decade’s politics. Whoever wins the election will have to plan to hand over an increasing share of our national wealth, first to meet interest payments, and then to repay the debt itself. These transfer payments will cut our country’s living standards.
Hence the importance of spelling out the nature of those public expenditure cuts. The sooner they start, the lower the long-term interest rates, and the smaller the amount of our future income that will have to be impounded for debt repayment.
Field’s analysis is correct; furthermore, evidence of growing public support for expenditure cuts appears in today’s Times, which carries details of a YouGov poll’s findings that, by a majority of almost three to one, voters support cuts in public spending, rather than increased taxation, as the preferred means to address the deficit.
Alistair Darling, too, understands that the rules have changed; in his speech in Cardiff this week, the Chancellor confirmed that his pre-Budget report will contain measures to reduce the deficit and went on to say:
Public spending is not a goal in itself. What matters is the results, what you get with your money – and how they help people meet their aspirations and ease their concerns.
The first priority has to be to look for areas where we can achieve greater efficiency. Some seem in a hurry to cut services. We are focussing on cutting costs.
So what the electorate will wish to know in the approach to the next election will be: how do the two principal parties propose to cut the deficit and restore budgetary rectitude? David Cameron and George Osborne know that; Alistair Darling has shown that he now gets it, too.
Sadly, however, Gordon Brown still doesn’t get it; in his speech to the TUC on Tuesday, the Prime Minister is likely to repeat the familiar fiction that yet further “investment” – his favoured euphemism for borrowing – is the only way to ride out the recession.
In doing so, the Prime Minister will demonstrate beyond doubt that he is still in the old business of seeking to bribe voters with money the country hasn’t got. But voters, if the YouGov poll is anything to go by, have decisively rejected that approach.
They, also, understand the new politics; Gordon Brown doesn’t.
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