He makes the valid point that local government has been subject to 10% reductions over the past three years and that wherever accountability comes to Downing Street, the cash continues to splash, notably in education, health and regional government.
Dr Jenkins prescribes medicine that is avowedly 'crude but fair'. Taking out the big beast projects such as Trident and the I.D. database is one thing. We can sort of understand that even if the headline figures are as scarily meaningless in size as the billions burnt at the altar of bank stabilisation/nationalisation.
But the fundamental overbalancing of the state sector and the ability of the productive part of the economy to maintain the rope and wire trick to the tune of £720 billion by 2011. Jenkins comments on the recent interest in foreign precedents.
But with half of public expenditure going on wages, the coming year will have to produce something swift, clinical and big. The corridors of Westminster are now awash with Swedes and Canadians peddling advice from similar experiences, all of it radical. In an interview in the McKinsey Quarterly, the former Swedish prime minister, Goran Persson, describes how he sliced 11% off every budget in the 1990s. The key, he said, was to be fearless, explicit and, above all, fair. No one should feel the victim of discrimination. In 2006 the Canadians likewise declared what amounted to a national emergency, slashing the national debt by a half.
Don't expect the political parties to have a straight conversation with us any time ahead of the election mind!
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