David Cameron's good tempered conversation with Evan Davis on the Today programme was in welcome contrast to Gordon Brown's defensive and irritable performance yesterday, and Davis made little headway in his attempt to wrongfoot Cameron on Tory plans to 'pay' for their NI proposals.
But Cameron's admission that the Tories made the same arguments about tax and spend in the 2005 election risks trapping them in a boring, static and ultimately unwinnable debate based on Government numbers: x billion tax cuts 'paid for' by y billion spending cuts. Instead, Tories needs to capitalise on the initiative seized by George Osborne when announcing their NI plans, and press home the argument for a dynamic approach to the economy. Even Alistair Darling has admitted that Brown's NI rise will put jobs at risk; independent forecasts suggest 57,000 jobs could go as employers retrench. Fewer jobs means less tax revenue and more welfare expenditure; by contrast a healthy economy means more jobs, more revenue and less welfare to pay out.
By choosing NI as the tax to hike, Brown handed the Conservatives the perfect weapon for deploying a positive, growth-based argument against Brown's negative, destructive approach. So let's hear it for growth, dynamism - and tax cuts. As Margaret Thatcher would say, stop arguing about how you cut up the cake - and bake a bigger cake!
