Bloody Mary

The economic crisis has led to clear blue water opening up between the two main political parties, but now another type of liquid has been used to help us understand how Tory and Labour policy on the looming recession differ.

In today’s Observer it states:

‘Brown abandoning prudence has, for the first time in years opened a real division between the two main parties over economic policy.

When he became Tory leader in late 2005, one of David Cameron’s key objectives was to prevent Brown ever again claiming that the Conservatives would cut spending and slash investment in public services. Resisting calls from the right to revert to type with a tax-cutting policy - and bent on rebranding the Conservatives as more modern and compassionate - Cameron insisted instead on matching Labour spending plans until 2010, and possibly beyond. The closer he stuck to Brown, the less he could be attacked for risking public services.

Brown’s uncharacteristically gung-ho reaction to the current crisis - pumping an extra £20bn into the economy, raising government borrowing well above the £100bn mark - has changed all that. He believes that the only way to keep the economy afloat is to encourage people to spend their way out the gloom. But his conversion to huge additional borrowing as the cure for recession proved a step too far for Cameron. In a speech at the London School of Economics last Tuesday, he slated Brown’s ‘reckless’ borrowing and ‘spend now, forget the future’ approach. The Tories now argue that Brown’s fiscal stimulus is ‘like taking a Bloody Mary the morning after’; it addresses the symptoms, not the causes, of the problem. The implication is that Brown is drunk on borrowing while their prescription is the sober one, rooted in grim reality.’