Politics | 4 April 2009

For the last 15 years, a four-letter word has terrified and paralysed the Conservative leadership: cuts. When it has been deployed by Gordon Brown on the electoral battlefield, the Tories have had no defence. Even after they surrendered and signed up to Labour’s spending plans, Mr Brown still accused them of planning ‘deep and painful cuts’. It is, as it happens, a charge entirely without foundation. Even now, the only people openly saying that state spending is too high are a bunch of supposed oddballs: Norman Tebbit, John Redwood — and 72 per cent of the British public.

The last group has crept up almost entirely undetected upon Westminster — which is so often the last place to realise which direction the rest of the country has taken. An old orthodoxy still reigns in SW1: that it is cruel and heartless to want cuts, and that higher state spending is the non-negotiable priority of modern, compassionate Britain.