The Tories start to level with the public on cuts

Isn’t it funny how things work?  Andrew Lansley gaffes in a radio interview last Wednesday and, as a direct result, George Osborne today writes the kind of article on public spending that he should have written months ago.  Rather than shying away from the idea of cuts, he actively pushes them as a necessary measure to tackle Brown’s debt crisis – an obvious point, I know, but one that the Tories wouldn’t have made so bluntly even just a few weeks back.  Here’s the key passage:

“We’ve all been tip-toeing around one of those discredited Gordon Brown dividing lines for too long. The real dividing line is not ‘cut versus investment’, but honesty versus dishonesty. We should have the confidence to tell the public the truth that Britain faces a debt crisis; that existing plans show that real spending will have to be cut, whoever is elected; and that the bills of rising unemployment and the huge interest costs of a soaring national debt mean that many government departments will face budget cuts.