People have often said that George Osborne is ‘very political’ and have not meant it as a compliment.
People have often said that George Osborne is ‘very political’ and have not meant it as a compliment. But it is, in principle, a good thing that politicians should be political (see what happens when they’re not). To understand the Cameron/Osborne political success, you need to see how quickly they have changed. A year ago, think-tanks like my own dear Policy Exchange were saying that the deficit should be cut, over the parliament now begun, by £100 billion in real terms. This was considered intolerable in polite society. In the same week, Andrew Lansley, now the Health Secretary, made a ‘gaffe’ in which he said that, with Health ‘ring-fenced’, other departmental budgets would have to be cut by 10 per cent. From that point, the Tories began surreptitiously to move, and on Tuesday Chancellor Osborne promised exactly that previously unthinkable real-terms deficit reduction, and departmental cuts of 25 per cent.
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