Tomorrow is the pre-budget report (PBR) in which the Chancellor will attempt to spin success from the grips of failure, boom from the unmitigated bust, stability from the tremors of recession, victory from the jaws of defeat. He may as well abandon all pretence - even the great conjurer Brown cannot magic up any more fictional fixes, mystery millions or surprise spending sprees. The country is on the verge of going bust. If the structural deficit of nearly 8% of GDP is not addressed we will almost certainly lose our current credit rating, increasing the cost of public and private borrowing, sending more businesses and homeowners into bankruptcy, sending yet more people into long term unemployment – the nation forced into even deeper cuts and tax hikes across the board to control the cost of borrowing.
Some are suggesting tax increases will plug the deficit – they are wrong. At nearly £200 billion per year, taxes alone cannot plug the gap. Indeed as every true conservative knows, higher taxes will only worsen the crisis. Now more than ever we need to maximise the productive private sector, boost business, and encourage the World’s wealth to our shores through lower taxes. Now more than ever we must confront something which has been on the cards for so long but, to the political leadership of this country, has been something they have long preferred to ignore.
Walk along Whitehall and it is as if nothing is wrong – traffic snarls up in the ever longer rush hour, the Westminster village mingles, tourists snap photographs – but just yards away is a different scene. Like the Bermuda Triangle, the thin triangle between Downing Street, Parliament and the Treasury has a lot of mystery to it. Disappearing here are not boats and planes but boat loads of taxpayers’ money, as the failing Labour government tries desperately to cling on to power. Fears of a man made black hole being created by the CERN research lab proved wrong – the black hole isn’t under the Swiss border but at the heart of our government, sucking up not the World but our nation’s future, and at the controls – where he has been since 1997 in one title or another– stands Gordon Brown.
Less a Hoover, more of a Dyson, Labour’s financial vacuum’s suction never wanes and its bag is never full. They say that money talks; under Labour it screams for help! Unless the United Kingdom wishes to decay into obscurity, the next government has no option but to cut spending – and the battle for a mandate to do so begins with the Conservative response to the PBR tomorrow.
