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Finance Bill

I completely agree. That is the point I was trying to make. I am pleased that there are members of the Conservative party who have woken up to the dangerous situation. I am not surprised that it took the Conservatives a while. After all—this is the point I was trying to make when I said they had given the Government the covering fire they needed—it was the Conservative party leader who boasted that he was the "heir to Blair", but it was the previous Prime Minister, Tony Blair, who presided over the situation in which we now find ourselves. My message to the Conservatives is extremely simple: we need a change of Government, not an imitation of this Government. If the Conservative party regards itself as the "heir to Blair", our party will have to do better. As we were sailing towards the ruinous position that we were in, did the Conservative party warn of the steps that needed to be taken? What was the Conservative leader saying? He was making speeches about sunshine winning the day and claiming that GDP was no longer important, because we ought to be concerned about GWB, which stood for general well-being. GDP was passé; the new Conservative party was not worried about growth. The leader of the Conservative party identified his main priority for retailers, whom we hear so much about, as being where they should locate chocolate oranges in their stores so as not to encourage obesity in their customers. As unemployment rises towards 3 million, perhaps the leader of the Conservative party would like to revisit his view that GDP is all in the past. Perhaps he could talk to some of those unemployed people and tell them how old fashioned it is to want the economy to grow. Perhaps he should talk to some retailers, or the former staff of the boarded-up Woolworths stores around the country, about the Conservative party's big priority for retailers, which is not about giving them the opportunity to be competitive, but about politicians micromanaging the exact location of confectionery in stores.