The Tory blogosphere and the party Right have become excited by reports that David Cameron is about to drop his pledge to match Labour’s public spending plans.
This is wrong: no such shift will occur but that does not mean that the Conservative leadership is committed to following Labour’s commitments for ever. It is all a question of timing, a crucial nuance that has become lost in the sound and fury.
Spending plans, and hence the scope for tax cuts, have become the main point of contention between the leadership, and Tory activists and widely followed sites such as conservativehome.
The official policy is that the proceeds of economic growth should be shared between increasing spending on public services and lower taxes. This means that public spending will fall as a share of national income after the recent sharp rises.
This is the approach that the Government is now planning to follow, with spending due to increase annually by 2 per cent in real terms over the three years from this April. This is less than half the rate of growth so far this decade.
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George Osborne argues that, since Labour has accepted the Tory analysis, Labour will follow the Government’s new plans for the next three years.
This is not nearly enough for the Tory Right, according to a conservativehome survey suggesting that about two thirds of activists want an even slower growth of spending. Mr Osborne regards this as unrealistic in the short term, especially at a time of great uncertainty about the economy. Any downturn and rise in unemployment will anyway boost expenditure.
In political terms, the Tories want to neutralise the Labour arguments about cutting and slashing spending that Gordon Brown and his allies would undoubtedly deploy.
Moreover, most criticisms by Tory spokesmen about the Government’s record on defence and law and order carry the implicit message that higher spending is required on the armed services, the police and prisons: commitments that Mr Osborne has so far resisted. It would be impossible to accommodate much extra on these items if overall spending growth were cut to, say, 1.5 per cent a year.
This is where timing matters. The Tory pledge was devised last year when a general election was in prospect this spring but since a contest is now unlikely until May or June next year at the earliest, a Conservative government would not come to office until the second of the three years in question was already under way, and it could be much later.
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Moreover, the Tories have said that, like Labour, they will reexamine the final, 2010-11 year, in a review in 2009.
So the real argument is about the stance the party will take next year or later for the period after 2010. Labour will be keen to play the “cuts” card against the Conservatives.
Mr Cameron, sensibly, remains cautious, not least because of doubts about the economy over the medium term. So he has not ruled out sticking to Labour plans beyond 2011.
Critics on the Right underestimate the extent of the slowdown in spending growth now under way and the difficulty of squeezing more in the short term.
But they are correct that the party needs to develop a more coherent strategy on the size as well as the structure of government.
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The Tory pledge on spending for the next two years is a holding exercise.
This debate is far from over.