DAVID CAMERON has warned that an incoming Conservative government will have to preside over “a massive cultural change” if it is to bring the United Kingdom’s “horrific” debt levels under control.
With years of savage spending cuts foreshadowed by Chancellor Alistair Darling’s budget, Mr Cameron also defined the coming era of “austerity politics” as one in which ministers need only expect reward by seeking “more for less”.
Mr Cameron’s grim challenge came as a YouGov poll showed his Conservative Party powering 18 points ahead of Labour, amid new warnings of “hidden” tax bombshells in the budget statement.
Resisting pressure to detail his plans for government now, the Conservative leader maintained that part of his difficulty derived from his suspicion that all of Mr Darling’s financial forecasts were “probably junk”.
That description came before new official figures were released showing that the UK economy shrank by 1.9 per cent – worse that the expected level – in the first three months of this year.
Mr Cameron’s comments also followed a warning from the respected Institute for Fiscal Studies that Britain will not have her unprecedented debt levels under control until 2032.
The Conservatives also seized on a new “black hole” in Mr Darling’s figures after the institute said there was no detail in the budget statement explaining how the government proposed to raise half of a projected £90 billion a year by 2017 to 2018 to bring borrowing under control.
As trade unions met MPs to consider their opposition to cuts predicted to be more savage than those of the Thatcher era, high earners facing the new 50 per cent top tax rate were also alerted to a “small print” plan in the chancellor’s statement to also tax employer contributions to their company pensions.
With Britain facing not one austerity parliament, but two, Mr Cameron accused Labour of introducing “a thoroughly dishonest budget” which postponed the necessary start on reducing public expenditure until after the general election.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, the Conservative leader also acknowledged as “politics” Mr Brown’s attempted “clever trick” in effectively challenging the Conservatives to commit to reverse the new top tax rate for the highest earners.
While he thought it wrong and a mistake, however, Mr Cameron said the 50 per cent tax would have to take its place “in the queue” of taxes the Conservatives would like to scrap over time.
A Populus poll conducted immediately after the budget suggested popular support for the new top tax rate and other key budget proposals. Yesterday’s YouGov poll for the Daily Telegraph, however, suggested Mr Cameron has nearly doubled his lead over Labour in the last month.
A pre-budget ICM poll had put the Conservative lead slightly down, at 10 points, although two other polls in the aftermath of the “smeargate” affair last weekend also gave the Tories leads of 17 and 19 points. Yesterday’s poll found 39 per cent think the Conservatives more likely to run the economy well, compared to 24 per cent choosing Labour. Mr Cameron’s personal standing was also up – with 56 per cent thinking he was proving to be a good leader – as against 69 per cent who said they were dissatisfied with Mr Brown as prime minister.