Political

Dear John Gray…

Dear John Gray,

You have me  baffled, I’ll confess.

Writing recently in the London Review of Books you talked about how in your view Vince Cable and others in the Orange Book a vision of a “small government”.

I’m confused because it’s true that Vince Cable’s chapter does call for a cap on the maximum that the state can raise in taxation. However, that maximum was set higher than the Labour government was taking in at the time in 2004, several years after they had ‘turned on the taps’ on public expenditure and left previous Conservative Party spending targets well behind.

Blair and Brown have been called many things, but saying that they were believers in government even smaller than small government is a new one on me, I must admit.

Yours etc.

Thanks to Geoffrey Payne for drawing my attention to this article.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

All comments and data you submit with them will be handled in line with the privacy and moderation policies.