This week's Spectator has much, much more on this:
"Add up all the money pledged through PFI, and the independent Institute for Fiscal Studies believes that you will quickly reach the sum of £110 billion. The institute’s findings suggest that, were this PFI lump-sum added to officially acknowledged government debt, the total figure would represent 45 per cent of gross domestic product — making a mockery of Mr Brown’s ‘sustainable investment’ rule, by which government debt is not meant to exceed 40 per cent of GDP. If this seems no more than a statistical abstraction, think of it this way: the overall national debt works out as £26,100 for every British household. This amounts to a second mortgage which all of us, including our children, must eventually pay off. And this is before the consequences of the Northern Rock crash or the £1 trillion of unfunded public sector pension liabilities are factored in."
A few quick thoughts:
1) The Conservative Party needs to be the party of economic reconstruction and transparency. George Osborne's decision to review our spending policy is therefore essential.
2) As I have said before, this must include an end to "sharing the proceeds of growth"; it also means we need to drop the second part of that mantra: "over the course of an economic cycle." As Brown has discovered, you cannot abolish the economic cycle. But economic cycles do not run for a defined period, and the phrase brings no meaningful political transparency or democratic accountability. It's simply a device which enables politicans to pretend they are being far-sighted whilst frantically fiddling the figures. I don't want our front bench to struggle in the Newsnight studio over precisely what they mean by an economic cycle, when it might start and when it might end, during the course of a general election campaign. Stick instead to plans during the course of a Parliament, or over a 3-year spending cycle. Those are meaningful periods.
3) We need to demolish whatever's left of Brown's reputation for economic competence (and surprisingly, that may be more than we think). We could start by posting YouTubes of "No more boom and bust" everywhere. But we need to make the point, relentlessly, that he was the "Enron Chancellor" - that he built up debts with the best (or worst) of them.
4) Yes, tax cuts may be really difficult, verging on the impossible, to afford. However we will need to find ways to relieve pressure on incomes in order to help generate recovery. Tax cuts are not simply for times of growth. Watch Frank Luntz on last night's Newsnight on this. DC has valued Luntz's insights before; he should pay special heed now.
5) Generational justice is vital to this. We need to explain it and develop it. I will post more on this in due course.
