After the early rumblings of debate last week, the TPA/Institute of Directors report on how to save £50 billion on Friday, the TUC's dire warnings of the weekend and the crucial Sunday Times poll yesterday, it is now accepted that the battle over public spending cuts is well and truly on.
We have been working ten to the dozen over the last few days discussing, explaining and debating the 34 specific proposals we put forward for savings (you can see the rebuttal of people's criticisms here). Even Peter Mandelson has started to concede ground on the subject today, saying that the Government was willing to review any item of spending even including the beloved ID cards.
George Osborne's piece in today's Evening Standard, therefore, could and should have gone further than it did. Having rightly called on the Prime Minister to "tell the truth about cuts", his full page article then went on to only use two numbers - 2007, in reference to the year, and G20, the organisation, which hardly counts.
The Sunday Times' polling showed that 60% of the public want spending cuts. The international markets and the credit rating agencies want reassurance that a future Government will take control of the public finances with a firm hand. Even the people who disagree with one or another of the 34 proposed cuts we and the IoD laid out last week have been emailing and calling in all day to say they appreciate us bringing some honesty to the debate, and wish that politicians would stop dodging the details.
The principle that cuts are necessary has now been largely accepted - Mr Osborne and the Shadow Treasury Team must now start to tell the public exactly which difficult decisions need to be made.
