...he had pledged to match Ken Livingstone's spending for 3 years or more. That's why in the nascent dispute between Daleonomics and Finkonomics, I'm with Iain. Boris' victory does show how receptive the voting public can be to politicians making government share the proceeds of economic pain in a cyclical slowdown. Other than a small and rapidly diminishing pool of Brownites, no one really buys into the argument that higher taxes beget better public services anymore. Seriously, how many people on the doorstep in Crewe are saying please put up taxes so we can have better public services?
And then there's that other canard - favoured by some Tories who should know better and a handful of unreconstructed Social Democrats who talk to the wrong people - that you can't reform public sector without spending more money on it first.
The record of both of those are; been there, done that, failed.
So all credit to Boris for aiming to cut expenditure from Day 1, especially those 40 daily copies of the Morning Star !
