I’m sure I’m not alone in hoping that the NI holiday for new jobs announced by David Cameron yesterday will represent only a small part of the Conservatives’ new recession-beating tax cuts. Because there is certainly a sense of anti-climax after the intense press and media build up at the weekend. It’s hard to disagree with David Frost of the British Chambers of Commerce when he says that this is a welfare reform suited to better economic times, rather than a tool for the downturn we are now experiencing. With the announcement of 4,000 jobs lost in the UK in just one day, it’s clear that the overriding concern of most businesses is whether they can stay afloat and how many jobs may have to be cut in order to survive – not the prospect of creating new jobs.
These are extreme circumstances which call for extreme measures, and it is a bitter irony that one G Brown, prime architect of Britain’s economic crisis, is now garnering praise for the urgency and gravity with which he responds to the crisis, the shameless abandonment of his own golden rules being presented as just more proof of his ability to do “whatever is necessary” to get Britain through the crisis.
So the Conservatives need to show that they do indeed grasp the scale of the downturn, and that they are prepared to move out of the narrow political confines in which they are in danger of being trapped. There is a route open to them which is entirely consistent with their pre-recession narrative of the “post-bureaucratic age.” It is to reduce the size of the state, because it is increasingly obvious that a shrinking private sector cannot support – and will not continue to tolerate - the bureaucratic public sector which so far remains impervious to economic reality. Removing entire layers of government, cancelling billions of pounds worth of useless (and damaging) databases, radical reform of public sector pensions and bonuses, ending the daily diet of pointless and self-defeating government initiatives , not to mention culling a few ministries and more than a few quangos. There has never been a better time to make the case for lean government – so what are we waiting for?
