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The Tories need to abandon their shibboleths

The state is likely to grow faster than the economy and so must the tax burden

The Conservatives have been in power since May 2010. Their record has been dreadful. This is partly because of adverse circumstances. But it is also because the party is in thrall to an outmoded ideology. On balance, each leader has also been worse than his or her predecessor.

Maybe Rishi Sunak will be the “grown up” who breaks this sequence. But it is not grown up to promise tight controls on public spending, but only after the next election. It is not grown up to lower debt by slashing public investment. It is not grown up to raise taxes through stealth reductions in thresholds. Grown ups should not promise cuts in the distant future. They should focus on the overall balance sheet, not just liabilities and they should be honest.

After the damage done by the fiscal austerity loaded on the most vulnerable by George Osborne, the ill-considered Brexit referendum of David Cameron, the botched negotiations of Theresa May, the lies of Boris Johnson and the folly of Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng, Sunak must offer something vastly better. The lengthy period of negligible productivity growth and stagnant real disposable incomes makes this even more urgent. It does not begin to be good enough for Sunak to impose another round of cheeseparing austerity, especially since that would tend to hurt the more vulnerable at a time of soaring prices.

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馬丁•沃爾夫

馬丁•沃爾夫(Martin Wolf) 是英國《金融時報》副主編及首席經濟評論員。爲嘉獎他對財經新聞作出的傑出貢獻,沃爾夫於2000年榮獲大英帝國勳爵位勳章(CBE)。他是牛津大學納菲爾德學院客座研究員,並被授予劍橋大學聖體學院和牛津經濟政策研究院(Oxonia)院士,同時也是諾丁漢大學特約教授。自1999年和2006年以來,他分別擔任達佛斯(Davos)每年一度「世界經濟論壇」的特邀評委成員和國際傳媒委員會的成員。2006年7月他榮獲諾丁漢大學文學博士;在同年12月他又榮獲倫敦政治經濟學院科學(經濟)博士榮譽教授的稱號。

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