Big is not beautiful
In all the excitement of this week’s revelations, it seems that David Cameron’s profoundly important speech at the CBI’s annual conference has been insufficiently noticed. At a time when relations between the Government and UK plc is at an all time low, British business leaders were treated to a small preview of the likely battle lines over the economy over the next few years.
In his speech, David Cameron caught the changing mood of the country. At a time when the Government is increasingly being viewed as untrustworthy in the eyes of the British public, David Cameron launched his ‘big change’ agenda. He criticised the Government for being too big, too bossy and too bureaucratic. With British businesses being burdened with £55bn of regulatory costs, I would be surprised if anyone at the conference disagreed with him.
This analysis was similar to Peter Oborne’s excellent comments in the Daily Mail last Saturday. People are now beginning to question the role and size of the state. It is becoming obvious to more and more people that big government and centralised bureaucracies are not only incompetent but also untrustworthy.
Gordon Brown likes to control everything. Yet as the Government goes from one crisis to another, people’s belief in the power of the state has been diminished. David Cameron this week set out an alternative philosophy. Power needs to be dispersed to a more local level.
Big government is increasingly no longer being seen as the cure all for the nation’s ills. Quite the reverse.