Given that Labour has put out a hilarious plea to discuss “issues” rather than personality (or lack thereof), I would like to rise to this challenge to discuss an excellent point raised by David Cameron on Friday: that the state spending/GDP ratio is far too high in many parts of the UK and needs to be lowered. Stating this utterly uncontroversial fact landed him in a bit of trouble, I suspect because of lack of understanding of the issues. So, in the spirit of Labour’s plea, here are some facts.
Cameron told Paxo that:
“In Northern Ireland, it is quite clear – and almost every party accepts this – that the size of the state has got too big. We need a bigger private sector. There are other parts of the country, including the north east. The aim has got to be to get the private sector, to get the commercial sector, going.”

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