Charles Moore

It is a convention of modern politics that cuts in public spending must be made sorrowfully. Etiquette seems to demand that phrases like ‘unpleasant task’ and ‘sharing the pain’ be used. Just before writing this, I heard Francis Maude on the Today programme deploying such terms with studious moderation. But one notices that most top-quality politicians, including Mr Maude, actually take some professional pleasure in the work. They are right to do so. It should be an absolute condition of taking money from the public through taxation that the person taking it minds wasting it. It is an absolute certainty, given the amounts of money taken, that huge amounts will be wasted. In the Gordon Brown years, it was wasted more than ever before.

When I asked him whether we needed any waterproofs for our visit to Afghanistan, our leader, Sandy Gall, was firm. No need whatever, he said. But when we reach Bamiyan on a UN plane early in the morning, we look down from the cliff above the town and see our hotel cut off by flood. A lorry has capsized in the torrents, and men with their salwars hoisted high are wading ineffectually about. Sandy’s solution is to book ten donkeys to carry us across later, and meanwhile breakfast in the rather broken-down hotel where, pro tem, we find ourselves. From where we sit, we can survey the niches in which, until the Taleban bombarded them to smithereens, stood the two colossal Buddhas — one from the fifth and the other from the third century — which were wonders of the world.

This column may not, I admit, have praised the Foreign Office at all times, so it is pleased to reveal an admirable FCO operation which has been going on, quietly and successfully, since early last year. In 2008, it became clear — many would say it was clear much, much earlier — that the plight of British citizens in Zimbabwe was desperate. Hyperinflation, and the refusal of Robert Mugabe’s government to honour their pensions, had made many destitute. In February 2009, the British government set up a resettlement scheme for British citizens over 70 who had right of abode here. If they agreed to settle permanently in the United Kingdom, they were flown to Gatwick and then placed in care homes and sheltered accommodation across the country.

People have often said that George Osborne is ‘very political’ and have not meant it as a compliment. People have often said that George Osborne is ‘very political’ and have not meant it as a compliment. But it is, in principle, a good thing that politicians should be political (see what happens when they’re not). To understand the Cameron/Osborne political success, you need to see how quickly they have changed. A year ago, think-tanks like my own dear Policy Exchange were saying that the deficit should be cut, over the parliament now begun, by £100 billion in real terms. This was considered intolerable in polite society.

As a would-be historian (engaged on the biography of Margaret Thatcher), I feel envious of Lord Saville. I could do with having all my hotel bills paid for 12 years, a full legal team to assist, the right to demand the presence of witnesses and £191 million. His 5,000 pages are the most expensive history book ever written. But however judicious Lord Saville has tried to be, his report cannot escape its ultimate political purpose — to please Sinn Fein. In that sense, its author is not Lord Saville, but Tony Blair, who set up the inquiry as part of a political deal. As people call for the soldiers who shot people on that day 38 years ago to be prosecuted, a running commentary is kept up by Martin McGuinness.

We are all being asked by the government what should be cut. I bet the British people will take part happily. Contrary to what you read in the papers, cutting is great fun. One serious contribution is already being offered by Paul Goodman, the excellent former MP for Wycombe, who stood down at the last election. Mr Goodman’s argument, in a new paper for Policy Exchange called ‘What do we want MPs to be?’, is the counterintuitive but correct one that the new restrictions on MPs’ earnings are against the public good. Once they depend on payment from the state, and are forced to account for all their time not spent on the state’s business, they cease to represent the variety of interests in this country and become simply second-rate civil servants.

Last Thursday, I got a rush-hour train out of London and sat down in a second-class carriage. Soon I found myself sitting opposite a minister in the new coalition. I was surprised by how much pleasure it gave me that, following the new guidance, he was not travelling first-class, or by official car. I let him doze, and when he woke up, I asked him a few questions in pursuit, as we like to say, of journalistic inquiries. Having drivers on hand at all times is, of course, a huge convenience for ministers, but that is why it is also a bad thing. They quickly forget that one of the main features of life for most people who pay their salaries is its sheer inconvenience.

The most moving thing was the photograph of the handshake between the Queen and her new Prime Minister. It is an excellent innovation to allow the ceremony to be seen, because it reminds people how the constitution works. After the days of uncertainty, we needed this more than usual. There is also something touching in seeing this beautiful old lady confer authority on a man who was minus 15 years old when she came to the throne. If it were not slightly unconstitutional to suggest it, I would add that the Queen looked very pleased. No doubt the mood will pass, but the fact of coalition actually feels more appropriate and satisfying than a small Tory majority would have done.

Since I so much agree with the Big Society which David Cameron wants to create rather than the big state which we have got, I should like to enthuse about the Tory manifesto which makes this the central theme. But there is a problem. The document does not really speak to us, the voters. True, it offers us on its front page an ‘invitation to join the government of Britain’. But haven’t we got enough on our plates without having to do politicians’ job for them? We pay them half our income, and still they want more from us! The manifesto does not start from the viewpoint of particular people — first-time voters, pensioners, parents, taxpayers or whoever — and look at the world as they do.