The next election will present voters with two distinct futures, says Irwin Stelzer: Labour’s rising taxes and love of the EU, or the Tories’ spending cuts and plans for the ‘broken society’
Where is the clear blue water? MPs in both the Labour and the Tory parties have engaged in behaviour that is illegal, or tawdry, or both. Both parties are responsible for the dire financial condition in which the country finds itself, Labour by spending and spending during the fat years, the Tories by promising to spend just as much if given the chance, instead of calling for restraint. Both parties will have to cut spending in the future, although the Prime Minister continues to denounce ‘Tory cuts’, either because he is ‘delusional as well as dishonest’, to quote Matthew d’Ancona, or ‘has a weakness for inexactitude when it come to figures’, to borrow Andrew Rawnsley’s delicious phrase. Both parties have their scissors at the ready as they approach a review of the already inadequate military budget.
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