Neil O'Brien

My career in politics nearly ended the day it began, when I was almost run over by a gang of Nazis in a Mini-Metro. Not a very butch car to be hit by, I know, and a rather pathetic substitute for a Panzer tank. But it was the early 1990s, and supporters of fascist government in Britain had seen their resources dwindle a bit over the decades. I was 14, and attending my first political demonstration, an Anti-Nazi League protest against the BNP in Halifax. I became separated from the crowd. There were some hooligans from the other side screeching around in a car yelling abuse and doing handbrake turns and, as I ran down a street away from them, they drove the car up onto the pavement behind me.

London’s separateness from the rest of Britain becomes more pronounced every year London has always been different from the rest of the country. But in recent decades the differences have widened to the point that, economically and socially, the capital now has little in common with the rest of Britain. The city may be hosting the Olympics in July, but none of those attending should kid themselves that they have visited Britain. London has effectively left the UK; it belongs instead to a loose international federation of global cities united by their economic dynamism and cosmopolitanism and the people who flit between them. This leads to a big problem: Londonitis.

Cameron’s ‘big idea’ is for a ‘Post-Bureaucratic Age’ enabled by the internet. Will it work? Peter Hoskin and Neil O’Brien aren’t sure The future: it’s all about computers. Anyone could tell you that. But not everyone gets quite as evangelical about it as David Cameron. Put the Conservative leader in a room full of tech-heads, web freaks and assorted blue-sky thinkers, and he soon starts to preach his gospel. Computers will catalyse our political evolution, he says. Armed with only an internet connection, the public will start seizing back control from an overreaching state. Everything will be cheaper, faster, better — and we’ll all be happier to boot. Burke’s Little Platoons have just gone digital.

There are some pretty cheeky claims in today’s Pre-Budget Report. One is that “Cyclically-adjusted borrowing is lower than at Budget across the medium-term forecast.” (page 171). That makes it sound like it’s all under got a bit better since the Budget. But in fact the “cyclically adjusted” improvement is entirely because of a redefinition of the cycle - not because of any actual reduction in the deficit.  For example, the PBR forecasts the deficit for 2013/4 as 5.5 percent of GDP - exactly the same as that in the 2009 Budget.   Another claim is that “The annual pace of consolidation set out in this Pre-Budget report is faster than the pace of deficit reduction forecast by the IMF for all other G7 economies” (page 33).

Just when you thought it couldn’t get any more dishonest, it does. I wrote a piece in the Telegraph this morning saying that the Tories should dramatise the scale of the Government’s debt crisis by symbolically dropping their IHT promise. I said: “Dropping such a high profile policy would have shock value. It would send the vital message that the country is going bust. That would allow the Conservatives more room to level with the public about the truly horrific situation they will inherit." Predictably, up pops Liam Byrne MP to say: "Even David Cameron's favourite right wing think tank now believes he is wrong to give £200,000 to just 3,000 of the wealthiest estates.