Believe the prime minister and it is morality, rather than economics, which requires him to cut taxes. In an important article in the Times last week that was factually incorrect, philosophically incoherent and economically bonkers, David Cameron set out the Tory credo. He was wrong on all counts. Trying to argue why every reader should vote Conservative, he instead revealed the darkness of the blind alley into which modern Conservatism has stumbled.
All Britains ills a bloated, high-taxing, welfare heavy nation were rooted in a state that had grown too large because of an indiscriminate willingness to spend money that was not its own. This undermined incentives and, worse, it undermined morality. Only one sentence genuflected towards the moral good of the rich and able paying a fair share towards our public services and safety nets: the real enemy of morality was the principle of taxation itself.
Continue reading...