Tory two-step

The Conservatives continue to seize the agenda – and thereby the initiative – as the ground shifts again in the pre-election positioning game.

After a weekend which began with sterile countering over just who would inflict the first and deepest cut in public spending, Cameron neatly jumps on a clumsily announced government review of public bodies with specific ‘practical efficiencies’ that involves scrapping a few bureaucratic quangos or at least making them more 'accountable', i.e. less effective.

It’s a skilful switch in focus even if it does rely a little on most journalists not knowing or caring that it was the venerated Mrs T and her veggies wot spawned the phenomenal growth of quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisations; all of whom have an impact on our daily lives and provide around 28% of us with employment. Yet if the contradiction is ever pointed out, Cameron will simply say that the Tories had the balance right but it is Labour that has taken the practice of sustaining a system of non-accountable executive power to excess.

To many, the experience of seeing promises that a Conservative government would tackle the democratic deficit is akin to hearing Genghis Khan offering to break out the BBQ sauce. Yet perhaps it is just this sort of audacity that is needed when threatening to kick shit out the unions just doesn’t convey the same magic as it did and New Labour has pretty much finished the job of rolling back the tide of socialism anyway.

But before Conservatives wrap themselves entirely in the reformist mantle, it’s worth remembering that for every public service that went out of democratic control into the hands of non-elected quangos during their last time in office, just as many were privatised – and all the signs so far is that not much has changed their thinking in that regard.