{"id":15774,"date":"2012-05-28T09:10:03","date_gmt":"2012-05-28T08:10:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=15774"},"modified":"2012-05-28T09:10:03","modified_gmt":"2012-05-28T08:10:03","slug":"cameron-does-have-a-higher-purpose-and-thats-what-we-should-be-worried-about","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2012\/05\/28\/cameron-does-have-a-higher-purpose-and-thats-what-we-should-be-worried-about\/","title":{"rendered":"Cameron does have a higher purpose – and that’s what we should be worried about"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gavin Kelly, the chief executive of the Resolution Foundation and a former senior adviser to prime ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown,\u00a0writing in the FT this morning argues<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Reforms cost money. All the more reason, you might think, for Mr Cameron to be clear about his governing purpose and relentless in focusing on his key long-term ambitions for the country. Yet this hasn\u2019t happened. Even his most ardent and articulate supporters struggle to communicate his higher goals beyond deficit reduction.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is very unfair to Cameron. It also suggests Cameron once really believed the PR puff about Progressive\u00a0Conservatism, to which only Demos appears to subscribe these days. Cameron is of course dedicated to deficit reduction but there is behind that a very clear plan:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Reduce the size of the state;<\/li>\n
  2. Reduce support for the\u00a0vulnerable;<\/li>\n
  3. Push down low wages by forcing people into work;<\/li>\n
  4. Increase\u00a0the income gap;<\/li>\n
  5. Increase unemployment until objectives 3 & 4 are achieved;<\/li>\n
  6. Pricing people out of housing so that wealth is concentrated in few hands;<\/li>\n
  7. Increase the\u00a0wealth\u00a0gap;<\/li>\n
  8. Pass control of as much of the income of the state as possible to\u00a0private\u00a0companies fort the\u00a0benefit\u00a0of an elite;<\/li>\n
  9. Tie this process up contractually for many years so that the future democratic will of the people can be subverted;<\/li>\n
  10. Ensure tax havens survive so that the resulting gains can be hidden from tax;<\/li>\n
  11. Alienate Scotland so that a perpetual English, Welsh and Northern Ireland parliament can be dominated by Tories for good.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    That's the plan.<\/p>\n

    Let's not pretend\u00a0otherwise.<\/p>\n

    And by the criteria he's\u00a0succeeding.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Gavin Kelly, the chief executive of the Resolution Foundation and a former senior adviser to prime ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown,\u00a0writing in the FT
     Read the full article…<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[96],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conservatives"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15774"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15774\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}