The Tory offer: a 10% cut across the board

By Alex Smith / @alexsmith1982

As Gordon Brown said in this afternoon’s PMQs:

“this is the day when the Conservatives have revealed their true manifesto for the country”.

He was talking about Andrew Lansley, the shadow Secretary of Health, who said on Radio 4 this morning:

“We haven’t done a spending review beyond 2011. But we have made it clear where our priorities lie: we are going to increase the resources for the NHS, we are going to increase resources for international development aid and we are going increase resources for schools. But that does mean, over three years beyond 2011, a 10% reduction in the departmental expenditure limits of other departments.”

Alex Barker at the Financial Times has said:

“this is political dynamite. Lansley said the reduction would be in departmental expenditure limits. These budgets are set in raw cash terms and are unadjusted for inflation. That means that a 10 per cent cut in DEL could end up as a real terms cut of even more than 10 per cent. Ouch.”

Clearly, it’s a ludicrous and typically Tory policy. But, with people finally rearing their ugly Conservative heads with regard to public spending, a 10% cut across the board is not punitive enough for some – Tim Montgomerie at ConservativeHome has said the Tories should cut spending in health as well.

Finally, we might now be able to bring the Tories back on to their hollow policy agenda for post-recession Britain. The oft obnoxious Janet Daley at the Telegraph has even said after this, it would “serve the Tories right” if they are left “looking like reactionary defenders of the old order”.

In a newly confident performance from Gordon Brown in PMQs this afternoon (although I still think he should look down on Cameron straight on, and not lean awkwardly on his dispatch box as he addresses the speaker), he said:

“At some point they’re going to have to tell us how many nurses and how many carers and how many teachers are going to be lost as a result of the announcement this morning of their new policy”.

Well done, Gordon. Back to business.