The era of increased state spending is over

The era began under the Major years when the Tories allowed both taxes and spending to rise.  Spending growth accelerated under Gordon Brown.  The idea that unreformed public services can be improved simply by hosing them with increased public spending has been tested to destruction.  According to a new PoliticsHome/ Spectator poll, 72% of Britons are ready for reductions or a freeze in public spending (click on chart to enlarge).

The public now know that extra spending is not the answer to the nation's problems.  As Fraser Nelson writes: "If spending can be more than doubled with little or not effect on services (some, like education, have grown worse) why should [the public] believe that cuts should be so damaging?"

And let's be clear: The public has come to this conclusion without any leadership from the nation's politicians.  Daily experience of bad services and stealth taxes has provided voters with more than enough instruction.  All the mainstream parties have beeb stuck in 1997 - listening to Portishead, watching This Life, reading Philip Gould - all believing that voters still want still more spending.

Harry Phibbs calls on the Conservative Party to realise the significance of the poll: "The proposition that spending cuts are impossible is now recognised as downright absurd. The public knows it and thanks to this poll, the Tories know that they know it. Let us stop pretending. For the nation to recover, the burden of state spending must be lifted. The Conservatives must be clear and open that they will face up to this challenge."

Tim Montgomerie

PoliticsHome has lots more details on its poll for The Spectator here.

Comments

[Jonathan Mackie]

The public seem to have viscerally accepted for sometime that un-restrained spending by the state is inimical. But generally they have still been in favour of things like the building schools for the future programme and investment in infrastructure.

We need to seperate good and bad public spending. There is huge amounts of money spent on activities which the state in all its guises shouldn't be involved in.

Public spending to me should be about addressing market failures. What we have currently is perfunctory spending and over the last few years all parties have been engaged in a public spending arms race, all to the detriment of our economic progress and our social cohesion.

[Norm Brainer]

The tories may not say they will cut costs, but brown kept saying it at PMQs and other times- I keep wondering why he promotes the conservatives better than they do themselves
- I think it's because he enjoys being a hate figure, so it makes him feel all big to tell us how much better it would be without him, but he is going to be our evil overlord for as long as he can keep it up.

[Tony Walker]

Slightly off topic but the BBC have just labelled Brown the 'world leader'-

[John Broughton]

Tim could you eplain how watching This Life equates to a desire for more public spending.

As a fan of the programme I can be categoric that it did not reduce my desire for smaller government, less state spending and lower taxation!

[ukipwebmaster]

Please tell this to the Tory Bournemouth Council:
http://www.bournemouthecho.co.uk/news/4253575.__200_000_BILL_FOR___50_000_BOURNEMOUTH_COUNCIL_BOSS_/

[Tim Montgomerie]

Good John. I'm just making the point that This Life was part of the late 1990s experience!

:-)

[Henry Mayhew - ukipper]

There seems to be a good Tim bad Tim battle going on for the editor's soul.

Bad Tim is into guns, wars and Israel, good Tim puts up the article above.

I wonder what the renowned clinical psychologist Derek Draper makes of it?

[Fredrik Ingemarsson]

I am betting that Gordon B is bizzy saving the world again....

[Jack Stone]

Don`t always believe what opinion polls tell you. They get the answers the people who commission the polls want them to have.
If you ask people do you believe we should cut spending on health, education, transport, crime. All of which the Tories will inevitably do the answer will be a clear majority against.
The Tories are proposing large spending cuts that will only be achieveable by throwing teachers, nurses and doctors out of work. They should not keep pretending that the cuts will be painless. They will not.They will damage public services and increase unemployment at a time when the economy can least afford it.

[Super Blue]

"There seems to be a good Tim bad Tim battle going on for the editor's soul.

Bad Tim is into guns, wars and Israel, good Tim puts up the article above.

I wonder what the renowned clinical psychologist Derek Draper makes of it?

Posted by: Henry Mayhew - ukipper | April 02, 2009 at 15:46"

"Don`t always believe what opinion polls tell you. They get the answers the people who commission the polls want them to have.
If you ask people do you believe we should cut spending on health, education, transport, crime. All of which the Tories will inevitably do the answer will be a clear majority against.
The Tories are proposing large spending cuts that will only be achieveable by throwing teachers, nurses and doctors out of work. They should not keep pretending that the cuts will be painless. They will not.They will damage public services and increase unemployment at a time when the economy can least afford it.

Posted by: Jack Stone | April 02, 2009 at 15:49"

Henry,

People often say "speak of the Devil and he will appear" - in your case it took only three minutes!

Stephen

[Michele Imperi]

I am sure you could sack a 1/4 of the public sector workforce without touching any of the frontline doctors, teachers, nurses etc . Do not fall for the usual labour lie that much needed cuts in spending = cuts in services . They have doubled government expenditure and have increased frontline staff by maximum 10% on average in the last 10 years .

[Robert Eve]

Why not make that 50% of the public sector?

[Rude Tory]

"The era of increased state spending is over"

What, completely?

[Brit]

You seem not to understand basic democracy. Always the rule is that the majority (have-nots) outvote the minority (haves). Thus as night follows day there is government hosing of taxpayers cash at all problems, imagined, real, potential, and drug-induced.

[Victor, NW Kent]

Jack Stone

Read this please - it may stop you forever repeating the same lie [the fact that Brown uses the same lie does not make it true].

No statement whatsoever by any Tory politician near to the centre of power has, in my memory which goes back much further than yours, said that vital staff in hospitals or schools should be cut.

By vital staff I mean doctors, nurses, physiotherapists, radiographers, ambulance attendants, teachers and the like. There is plenty of room to cut back room staff without affecting service quality in any adverse way.

But, Mr Stone, let me tell you that this government has reduced hospital beds by 12% and has cut thousands of school nurses and I think those are vital.

Right now police forces are being forced to cut back on front line staffing - almost every force.

Right now the much vaunted Labour plan to build umpteen new higher education centres has collapsed and the 72 projects on the go have either been halted or trimmed right back.

That is the reality, Mr Stone. Labour has run out of our money.

It always does.

[Denis Cooper]

Public expenditure should be gradually down to about 30% of GDP - when the economic conditions are such that the private sector can readily absorb the 10% of the workforce who will have to be redeployed.

[resident leftie]

It's clear the Tories need to offer large costed spending cuts at the next election. It's the Tory ideology, and this proves it's popular. They need to be sure to specify which wasteful quangoes and useful state employees they will cull, though.

[Freddy]

What I want to know is who is going to PAY for the things that have been agreed at the G20.

The BBC, surprise, surprise, say the deal is worth £681billion!

[TomTom]

The Tories are proposing large spending cuts that will only be achieveable by throwing teachers, nurses and doctors out of work.

Can you prove that Mr Stoned ?

In fact public spending does not go on teachers, doctors or nurses but on Consultancy Fees to PFI projects, building projects, interest charges. Did you know that 5% NHS budgets are returned to the Treasury as a "capital levy" ?

Do you really think Education spending is spent on teachers ? Now that Child Social Services are merged with Education noone knows where the funds are going.

As for the NHS money is boosting managerial salaries and perks rather than front line services.

The simple fact is Mr Stoned we have paid billions - over £1.3 Trillion extra spending since Gordo rode into town and have stimulated inflation in house prices and transport by over-bloating the public sector.

If 3.6 million Britons pay >50% of the entire revenue from Income Tax and that they pay more than 23.6 million basic rate taxpayers; and 25% Corporation Tax revenues come from the Top 4 banks.....you can see how far the collapse in revenues makes public spending cuts inevitable.

Mr Stoned prefers Labour Governments to make the cuts - as Denis Healey did in 1976 by not repairing sewers or infrastructure - and imposing pay controls leading to union rebellion. Trouble is noone but Mr Stoned wants a Labour Government since they have been catastrophic for every family whether they are getting 0% interest on savings or waiting on hold for HMRC to sort out the tax credits fiasco.

Jack thinks the world owes us a living. Harsh truth is....it does not !

[Daniel Blinkelstein]

This poll shows overwhelming public acceptance for reductions in government spending.

But consider how people would normally expect the Tories to react to such a poll - as an opportunity to make reductions in government spending. To do this will only confirm everyone's worst impressions of the party. By contrast, for the Conservatives to say that they will do no such thing in the face of public opinion will prove the opposite, and show that the party has changed, has modernised, has been fully reformed by David Cameron, has ...

[christina Speight]

Jack Stone at 15:49 talks rubbish as usual. You CAN believe polls if they've been done properly. This poll seems to have asked a properly constructed questionnaire but CONTRARY TO PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE lacks explanation on the sample.

They do not say if they are a member of the British Polling Council and / or the MRS. The Spectator merely says "PoliticsHome interviewed 1406 UK adults by email between 25–26 March. Results are weighted by party identification to reflect the UK at large."

YouGov, the only major e-mail pollster, has spent a fortune building up an enormous base from which to draw totally representative samples. Have They done this too? The point I am making is that the sample may not be a good sample and they don't give us the raw data to see for ourselves.

My advice is treat it as an interesting exercise but NOT a proper opinion poll.

--- as for Mr Stone - the people who should worry about cuts should b e the army of consultants, the IT specialists who have ripped us off non-stop, and all those "job" holders in non-job posts in the bureaucracy. Other cuts should be on MPs allowances and indeed on the number of MPs in total.
Mr Stone is just trotting out the usual scare.

[Marian]

"Bad Tim is into guns, wars and Israel."

To be fair to Tim support for Israel puts him in the good guys camp, as far as I am concerned.

[David Sergeant]

I suspect Jack Stone is merely parroting the Labour/BBC line which has been so successful over the years. Actually Jack old boy it is complete rubbish - during all the 18 years no annual education, health and law & order budgets were ever cut, in fact they were increased year on year.

I appreciate that most facts worry you because you live in a different world to most of us, however, in the interests of being helpful it is possible you got the wrong idea because the previous Labour government had been cutting all three budgets so when the Tories came in in 1979 huge areas of maintenance and replacement etc had been left undone so for the first 4/5 years all the Tories were doing was catching up on what Labour had not done. So Labour and the BBC (yes I really do mean the BBC) then claimed that under the Tories no progress had been made in the public services since we were really only back to where we should have been in 78/79 and they and people like you just kept the nonsense going.

[marksany]

Here is the manual to save much of the money George will be looking for: "Systems Thinking in the Public Sector"by John Seddon.
Can somebody please get a senior Tory to meet John? He has methods to unlock savings that work and improve services and he's implemented them for real in housing offices, police stations and benefit call centres.

[The Bishop Swine]

"Slightly off topic but the BBC have just labelled Brown the 'world leader"

Yes and in the last few minutes, tried very hard to put those very words into the mouth of a dutch leader. Since when was the BBC is the business of backing comrade Brown.Are we prepared for a 2nd Brown bounce should it come?

[Geordie-Tory]

Delusional Jack Stone, poor, sad, empty Labour Lovin' Loser Jack Stone.

Isn't it amazing how the Left and Labour are the real Nasty party, and the closer they come to losing power the more bile they are willing to spit?!

[Alex Swanson]

This time last year, proposing public spending cuts would have resulted in hysterical postings abusing anybody who supported them - "extremist", "out of touch with reality", "electoral suicide" would have been the least of it. You might even have been accused of the (in Cameroonie eyes) vile crime of being a long-standing Conservative Party activist.

Where are those people now?

[David Lindsay]

Who are the "Vichyists" now? Who is now siding with France and Germany against the United Kingdom and the United States?

Keynesianism is the true "Anglo-Saxon model", invented in Britain and pioneered in America.

Still, the quest to find you a country now that America has reverted to type seems to have taken a turn: newly neocon Carolingia beckons.

[Malcolm Dunn]

They're people Alex Swanson who've had to watch an economic collapse here in Britain and in many other countries of the world. None but no one predicted that this would be this bad this quickly.
On topic I would make two observations. It's a shame this poll will only be published in the Spectator where it will be mostly be read by the converted. I wish it had been commissioned by the Guardian. It would have stuck in their throats!
But it is easy to argue for cuts in public spending. It is more difficult to decide where they will fall. the glib comments that appear on this site about saving billions cutting diversity advisors andd other non jobs are as irritating to me as they are wrong.
If we are going to cut the billions necessary,it is going to hurt.It will probably hurt Conservatives too. But we need to start making the case and preparing people for this. Three weeks of an election campaign is not nearly enough.

[resident leftie]

In the same poll, 77% of people think increasing the top rate of tax is the best way to raise taxes to help balance the budget, so it looks like Osborne's wholehearted support for this measure is a vote winner, too.

[David Belchamber]

So many people above have howled Jack Stone down for producing his mantra (I think that he is in fact Gordon Brown) that I don't need to waste time doing so as well.

The fact is that the public sector is thoroughly obese after 12 years of Labour and we have to get rid of the blubber to let it regain fitness and allow the front-line people to operate properly again.

One question for Jack Stone (whichever one is on duty today): in the most unlikely event that Labour were to be re-elected in the next year, what would Gordon Brown do to repair the enormous damage he himself has caused to the economy?

What would he cut?

[another richard]

What's wrong in throwing incompetant teachers, nurses and doctors out of work?

The manufacturing business I work for has just had to have a round of redundancies but have used this as an opportunity to remove the most ineffective employees and other general dead wood operations.

Getting rid of the worst 5-10% of employees in all areas of the public sector would lead to an improvement of services and at lower cost.

[Richard Calhoun]

Not only do we need cuts in public spending but we need some radical alternatives to the way we raise taxes ---- what has happened to George Osborne's proposal / flying a kite etc to a FLAT TAX?

[Jack Stone]

The Conservative Party should not peddling the lie that these cuts they are planning will be painless.They will not be. Ordinary people will lose there low paid jobs and services will be damaged.
The trouble with the Conservative party is that they hate the public sector and those that work in it.Lord Tebbit seems to regard public sector workers as little more than lazy over paid vermin.
Until the Conservative Party change there attitude to the public sector and those hard working individuals wqho work in it and serve the public well they will be unfit to govern this country.

[Alex Swanson]

The Conservative Party should not peddling the lie that these cuts they are planning will be painless.They will not be.

Example:
The Home Office has spent years trying to set up a National Firearms Database. They admit themselevs that there is no evidence whatever to suppose that the existence of this database will improve public safety at all. It's just another instance of totalitarian control-freakery. It can and should be scrapped.

[Freddy]

@Jack Stone

As my rates and taxes contribute to meeting the cost of the public sector, I think that I am entitled to say that I don't think that it is well managed.

I'll give you an interesting example of what I mean. As you know mobile phones distract drivers, well so do satellite navigation systems - they're all the rage with young drivers. Young drivers are prone to prang their cars - they need as little distraction as possible, yet many of the sat nav maps are not completely up to date.

Yet there are no minimum standards or regulations relating to sat nav maps, and it's my belief that the Department of Transport are not tackling this problem.

Jack, better management of the public sector is urgently required. I don't think that Gordon Brown will do anything to help. Cameron might!

[Sam Armstrong]

I like the 'This Life' analogy. When that show went out, things like copious drugs and mad sex and, of course, mad state spending had not yet gone national. The BBC treated us to a sneaky-peak of what the party would be like. Watching reruns of that show, Britain looks naive in it. We were up for the party, excited. The party is over now, and we are so much wiser. We simply have to grow up now and become adults.

I speak as a 31 year old who had a hammer and sickle on his wall in 97, but in 09 has viewed the Daniel Hannan video about 50 times. There are many like who have grown up since This Life.

[dcj]

Mr Stone

I'm interested in what you say about the rotten nasty Tories making caring public servants redundant.

energwatch was a public body which actually did some good, defending vulnerable customers who were having problems with their energy suppliers which they found difficult, if not impossible, to resolve themselves. (And let's face it, Jack, I don't think you're unintelligent, but could you make sense of a 13-digit MPAN mix-up which resulted in you being supplied by [say] British Gas instead of npower and sent a bill for £4,589 for 3 months?)

Over 1.7 million consumers were helped by energywatch in 6 years. So what does McBroon do? He closed energywatch (c 150 redundancies) and dumped the vulnerable consumers into the care of a toothless chocolate teapot of a quango called Consumer Focus which can't give a euphenism about helping individual consumers but is very happy sitting in big posh expensive offices in London talking about how they want to help "The Consumer." (not)

So McBroon removed one bit of the public sector which did help people. I on the other hand want to get rid of the advisers, "managers", community planners, real nappy outreach workers, and the rest of the ZaNuLab apparatchiks who soak up resources and do precisely nowt of any use. I want to let teachers teach, doctors heal and nurses care. And pray for patients, if they wish.

I worked in education for 25 years. I know how many genuinely caring teachers there are out there. (And a few of the other type as well, I'm afraid, and increasingly so) I've seen the terrible damage which Labour policies have done to our children - a generation of feral know-nothings without the capacity to enjoy themselves or any appreciation of their heritage. Have a look in the streets where you live, Jack, on a Friday night - if you dare go out there, because the police are busy filling in their "equality-and-diversity" forms. And don't get hurt and get sent to hospital - MRSA and c-difficile are waiting. Or are these, too, Tory plots?

I said in 1997 that Labour would ruin our society but preserve the economy. Now McBroon has proved me wrong - he's done both. And when we get our first BNP MEPs or even, God forbid, MPs, just think, Jack - Gordon done it.

PS Please feel free to report me for invoking the name of the Almighty and thereby offending non-believers.

[Malcolm Dunn]

I know I'm the last person to comment on this as I've fallen into the trap many times but it's becoming very dull seeing so many threads being used to rebut Jack Stone.
Jack NEVER debates with anybody, mainly I suspect because he can't.All he can do is spout slogans that are designed to irritate Conservatives.In that he is succceeeding beyond his wildest dreams.I really think it best if he's ignored.

[Tim Montgomerie]

Malcolm is quite right. Jack and other trolls should be ignored. Feed them with attention and they'll only get more voluble.

[dcj]

Point taken. Last night was not good and Jack got on my nerves once too often. Still, I enjoyed writing it.

[Graeme Portishead are fine but Belle&Sebastian rule Archer]

Tim wrote All the mainstream parties have beeb stuck in 1997 - listening to Portishead, watching This Life, reading Philip Gould...

How did you know that?! It's freakily insightful. Is Portisheadism a Cameroon trait? Has the Editor now, or at any point in the past, been a Portishead fan? This, clearly, is a Question Which Must Be Asked in the next monthly survey.

[Jack Stone]

dcj.Regularly attend hospitals and have nothing but praise for them. There are problems, nothing is perfect but the care and treatment you get on with the NHS is in my experience first class as David Cameron as testified himself.

[anthony.scholefield]

There is wasteful spending everywhere. Why does the NHS need five times more nurses per bed than before 1948?
Look at community matrons and modern matrons-ringfenced cash-which the NHS does not know what to do with but were a bright idea from Parliament a few years ago when matrons were all the rage.
What about classroom assistants-ask anuy teacher if they are any use?