The Horsell's Mouth Politics, pedantry and personal interests

The man who nose - Ken Clarke

As well as spinning madly about security, Labour’s press team has also been trying to get stuff into the paper along the lines that the Conservative will be cutting spending and raising taxes after Ken Clarke said it would be “folly” to rule out tax increases. The BBC has dutifully responded with just such a story.

First of all, I should hope that no promises whatsoever will be made on tax increases or otherwise until George Osborne is able to see the proper and full government account – including all the off balance sheet PFI liabilities. It would be totally stupid to make any pledges on the overall tax burden until the Conservatives know just what a state the country is in. Ken Clarke is absolutely right and I hope that even tax-cutting Tories can see the logic in that position – or at least appreciate the total illogicality of promising to maintain or cut tax rates at this stage.

Secondly, the BBC has a long memory when it comes to Mrs Thatcher and the poll tax or John Major and sleaze but a very short one when it comes to recalling just who on earth plunged this country into near-bankruptcy to begin with. Every economically active person played a small part, certain larger players in the economy such as the banks and the regulators played a far more significant role but the one institution that has to carry the can for such throwaway mismanagement is HM Government.

For two years, Labour has spun that the banks were to blame and the price of the banks readily shouldering that blame has been £60bn of taxpayers’ money to make them competitive again. Those that wouldn’t play ball, like Sir Fred Goodwin, were fed to the media in a frenzy of inflammatory briefings that if they had been conducted by a private citizen on another private citizen would have been on the edge of legality.

The BBC, Grauniad and others have happily swallowed that line to the point where most of the British public believe that the banks were more or just as responsible as the government for the recession. Rubbish.

A few banks don’t make a recession, no matter how dodgy the loans. The recession was caused by a framework of poor decisions, insufficient regulation, faulty economic plans and over-optimistic projections. It was also caused because western governments were too complacent and arrogant to understand that their economies must shift to work around the emerging markets of the East rather than just continuing as per the past 50 years. The person responsible for the poor economic planning, the lack of realpolitick, the poor regulation and stoking up of the boom was not Sir Fred or any other banker. It was Gordon Brown the chancellor and Gordon Brown the PM.

Yet somehow it will be the fault of the Conservative Party if, after the next election, taxes need to rise and spending be cut. Well, spending will be cut after the next election because our national debt needs to be controlled. And taxes will rise as well because cuts alone won’t deliver the massive amounts of money that need to be raised.

DC is concerned that people will see the Conservatives offering only a decade of downbeat austerity and vote for Gordon who wants more borrowing to keep spending. It is a worry but in the end you have to trust the electorate to do what is right. And I think they will understand that a decade of different economic behaviour – most of it bearable, much of it positive but some of it unwelcome – is the price of the Noughties Boom.