“Voters must feel confused,” says Andrew Grice in The Independent. The Tories are the natural tax-cutters, but have “got themselves into the bizarre position where they can’t say so”. Meanwhile, Gordon Brown is putting on the Tories’ “tax-cutting clothes” to justify even higher borrowing – details of which will be fully revealed in Monday’s Pre-Budget Report (PBR). The Government’s plan to raise debt further and to encourage people who can least afford it to spend more is “reckless and immoral”, says Alice Miles in The Times. Tory leader David Cameron is starting to fight back – he has finally shelved his commitment to match Labour’s spending plans – but his failure to make political capital out of this is “astonishing”.
It is, agrees Simon Heffer in The Daily Telegraph. The reason so many people hold the “ridiculous view” that only the Government “can ensure a roof is kept over their heads and food in their bellies” (the latest Mori poll showed Labour on 37%, just three points behind the Tories) is because the Tories “struggle to tell them anything different”. But it’s not too late for the Conservatives to proclaim a “new, optimistic” strategy, says Fraser Nelson in The Spectator. They should be calling for “serious, funded tax cuts as a logical element of their broader radical campaign to transfer power from the Government to the people”.
Cutting the overall budget is something no post-war government has managed. But due to Brown’s extravagance, there’s lots of “fat to cut”. Money spent on education and the NHS is clearly not having the desired effect: simply keeping budget increases in line with inflation would save £11.1bn a year. Cutting quango budgets by 10% would save an estimated £6bn.
Then there’s the business of tax cuts, says Janet Daley in The Daily Telegraph. Osborne and Cameron’s opposition to ‘unfunded’ tax cuts is as perverse as it is politically suicidal. The Tories are usually the first to point out that wealth isn’t a fixed entity that must be divided like a pie, but an “organism whose size can be affected by such things as tax rises and reductions”. The right kind of tax cuts, especially during a recession, lead to economic growth, producing more tax revenue. This is where their policies could gain traction. “Brown may be talking tax cuts but he is still Mr Brown.” His cuts are aimed at those he perceives as needing help (the poorest) rather than those who would like to be better able to help themselves and others (the middle classes).
There are few indications the rest of the world’s key players are “keen to sign to up Gordonomics”, says Jason Groves in The Sunday Express. The recent slide in sterling is hardly an endorsement of Brown’s stewardship; The Wall Street Journal notes his plans to cut taxes by further borrowing are unlikely to stimulate anything bar perhaps his approval ratings. Brown may have hailed the G20 summit in Washington last weekend as historic, but this was an exaggeration, says Miles. His assertion that the G20 had accepted his call for coordinated cash injections and tax cuts amounted to 21 words on fiscal stimulus in a statement of 3,600 – and they included the warning “providing it is conducive to fiscal sustainability”. How long can his “bluff and bravado” go on?