Are the Tories really lurching to the right?

Ever since John Redwood’s proposals first began to be floated, the Tories have been accused of lurching to the right. On the Today Programme this morning, Alistair Darling predictably accused the Tories of planning 21 billion pounds worth of spending cuts. While in The Independent today, Colin Brown writes that: 

“The more Shadow Chancellor George Osborne protested yesterday that the Redwood working party’s conclusions did not represent a “lurch to the right”, the more it sounded like that is just what is about to happen.

Mr Cameron’s appointment of Mr Redwood to chair the commission on economic competitiveness was revealing. He must have known Mr Redwood, a committed Thatcherite, would propose a radical tax cutting package.” But crucially, Cameron appointed Redwood to this job in December 2005. So if this is a so-called lurch to the right it is one that has been planned right from the beginning of Cameron’s leadership.

Now, it is fair to say that the Tories hoped that they’d start talking about these core issues from a position of strength–not weakness–in