Osborne looks to long-term strategy
The Conservatives must be trusted to run the economy before they can be trusted to run the country, shadow chancellor George Osborne said today.
In a keynote speech to the Centre for Policy Studies, Mr Osborne said the party had to avoid populist policies and develop a “broad, credible economic policy” to be a credible opposition to the government.
They had to focus on four key objectives to address the long-term challenges facing Britain, he said – macro economic stability, increased productivity, reduced demand on the state and lower taxes.
This last needed particular focus, Mr Osborne said, insisting the Conservatives had to make “not just the moral case for lower taxation, powerful as that is, but also the economic case”.
“The global economy will not tolerate high tax systems of the kind Gordon Brown is building,” he continued.
“So the fourth objective of our economic policy is lower and simpler taxes – and we need to make the case for lower and simpler taxes from the beginning of the parliament, not in the last weeks before polling day.”
Echoing the comments of shadow education secretary David Cameron at the weekend, Mr Osborne said the Tories must be wary of disagreeing with the Labour government for its own sake, even when their policies were consistent with Conservative beliefs.
“Too often we have sacrificed long-term credibility for the prospect of winning the support of an aggrieved section of the population or the possibility of winning a vote in the House of Commons,” the shadow chancellor said.
“By disagreeing with the prime minister when he attempts to do the right thing, we undermine our credibility when we criticise him for doing the wrong thing.
“Short termism has hampered attempts to develop a long term economic policy. We must not fall into the same trap this parliament.
“We must never again confuse populism with popularity. Britain today desperately needs an opposition with a broad, credible, economic policy. That policy must have one over-arching ambition: to achieve rising living standards.”
