Clegg’s plans to cut back the state

It may have overlapped generously with his first speech as Deputy PM, but Nick Clegg’s effort today is still a breezy read.  Its subject is how the overreaching state should be pushed back out of people’s lives.  Its rhetoric is punchy and persuasive in equal measures. And there’s even a mention for that most underrated of creatures: the grey squirrel.  

But it’s not just freedom and fauna; there are dashes of substance in there too.  This, for instance, is something I hadn’t come across before:

“…my colleague, Eric Pickles, will shortly be asking Councillors and Council staff to identify outmoded, outdated and obsolete secondary legislation which could be cut down to size.”