---

Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

I can. All the research—I hesitated before I used that word, because it sounds as though I am contracting out my views to ““experts””—all my instincts and everything that I and others have read suggest that children who start at a relative disadvantage in terms of parental income or exposure to knowledge and learning at a young age need assistance when they are three, four, five and six years old. Giving them a pot of money when they are 18 years old gives them an amount to spend, but it does not fundamentally address their relative disadvantages in terms of lifetime opportunities. If that money is to be spent, it would be better spent on targeting children from poorer and more disadvantaged backgrounds more precisely and at an earlier stage in their lives. Let me make a final observation about the bigger picture and the vision as a whole. When I mentioned, in passing, the two old parties, I heard some noises off scoffing at that description. However, I detect a sense in the country that if people keep voting for the same two tired old parties, they cannot expect anything other than the same two tired sets of policy proposals. There is a mood for change in the country. Back in the 1950s, 98 per cent. of the people who voted in a general election voted for either the Labour party or the Conservative party. We had a very tribal society, in which people knew what side they were on and voted accordingly. At the last general election, for the first time since the second world war, the proportion of votes for the two old parties fell below 70 per cent., to 68 per cent. We live in a more fluid, more mobile, freer society nowadays. A group of Conservatives to whom I was talking recently told me, ““When it comes to this Budget, we must make certain that we win the election by persuading people that the problems are the responsibility of Gordon Brown.”” I said, ““I think you are right: I think many people readily accept that the Prime Minister bears a large share of the blame for Britain's economic woes.”” However, I went on to ask ““Why do you assume that people who identify the Prime Minister as being culpable should regard the Conservative party as being part of the solution?”” In order to be successful, someone who runs an Indian restaurant has to do more than just persuade people that they do not like Chinese food, because there are more choices out there than ever before. That is why it was so extraordinary that the shadow Business Secretary observed that he would prefer the current Prime Minister to stay in office at the head of a majority Labour Government than the Conservatives to be the largest party in a balanced Parliament. That was an extraordinary statement for a Conservative Front Bencher to make, and, although the shadow Business Secretary has become a national treasure in many ways, it shows how out of step he is with the mood of the time, because the old type of politics, under which Labour and Conservatives swapped between themselves, is no longer a reliable guide to the future. To say that we know what will happen if neither of the two old parties can convince the people that they deserve to govern alone because we saw what happened in 1974 is just like saying we know what is going to happen in 2046. We have no idea what will happen 36 years from now. This is the last Budget of an old era, because we will now increasingly find that we need a form of politics that addresses a wider range of public concerns than the current political parties can articulate.