TAX-CUTTING TORYISM has been on the rampage. Most of the early Conservative leadership candidates have committed to tax cuts, and in some cases these were to be early and big. The claim was that these would reflect the candidate’s support for Thatcherism, with its signature themes of a small state and low public spending.
The truth is not so simple. There is a problem here of what economists sometimes call “time-inconsistency”, although that phrase has a rather different connotation in the highbrow journals.
Public expenditure
