Has Osborne’s speech opened the reformist floodgates?

Perhaps the most signficant aspect of Osborne’s council tax proposal is the method in which it will be funded – not by increasing tax elsewhere, but by makings savings both at a local level and on the current Government’s spending on consultants and advertising.  It’s the boldest attack the Cameroons have yet made on government waste, and their clearest admission that not all public spending is good in itself.

The question now is whether Cameron and Osborne are going to pick up this ball and run with it.  They’ve tended to shy away from an out-and-out public service reform message, for fear of fuelling Labour’s “Tory cuts” attack.  But now the party hares have even more reason to argue: “Why hold back?  Brown has built so much waste and inefficiency into the public sector that – so long as you can identify that waste – almost no tax cut (or, indeed, freeze) need go unfunded.”