A question of commitment

Punchy stuff from Michael Fallon in today’s Telegraph.  The Tory deputy chairman of the Treasury Select Committee sets out five ways for his party to “get real” over public spending cuts.  Over at ConservativeHome, Tim Montgomerie dwells on perhaps the most striking of those five: a recommendation that the Tories should think again about national pay bargaining in the public sector.  But, for those interested in interal Tory politics, Fallon’s first point also stands out:

“No, if we really want to cut public spending, there are five things we need to do. The first is to convince the shadow cabinet. There’s little evidence that it has the faintest idea of the commitment needed. Every month, a spokesman still goes for a headline by castigating a ‘postcode lottery’ (of which there will be plenty more as spending reduces) or scorns local revenue-raising ideas like Nottingham’s congestion charge (whatever happened to localism?).