‘Man Up’

The pressure is now on in the Tory Party. The parliamentary party, who are more loyal to David Cameron than the rest of party, have made sure the heat is now on George Osborne to produce a budget that could not have been written by Ed Balls.

Tories of all places are calling for tax cuts and to cut the debt and deficit. Last year, as well as this year, the debt will rise. This year the deficit will do so too. George Osborne has not achieved what he set out to do. There is also only 0.2% growth to boot. Alistair Darling had a better record with about 1% of growth at the end of his time. This is directly effecting the Conservatives performance for 2015 with many UKIP voters basing their swap on economic issues (see http://thingselliottsays.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/eastleigh.html)

Priti Patel has said "that our economy is struggling. Growth is sluggish, rising living costs mean families have to tighten their belts … the truth is that the taxes and regulation are a large part of the problem."

Even Kwasi Kwarteng, who chairs the free enterprise select committee, has said "We are still borrowing £120bn. We are not in a fit state to be spending money in this way … We have got to address this, and if we don't, what will happen is that we will have another government which will probably not address it and we will end up being a basket case."

"I'm quite happy to say that publicly. This is a big, big problem, and unless we can actually man up and deal with it, I think we've got big problems ahead of us."

People who have spoken out include Ben Gummer, Theresa Coffey and David Rutley, people who do not usually speak in such a disapproving tone. They are piling on Conservative pressure to have a more Conservative economic policy.

David Cameron recently said that "there would be no shift to the right" under his government. Tory MPs aren't asking for this. They are asking for a shift from Brownite economics to that of a liberal government. The problem for George Osborne is that he is too, small c, conservative. He refuses to change from the path left by the last government, indeed those that advised Mr Darling still advise him. The pressure is on to ‘man up and deal with it’ if not Mr Osborne may find that he’s out of a job (if it becomes so bad the PM will throw him off first).