The chancellor should pay heed to his predecessors at the Treasury – and to the doubts of his own MPs[br]It is neither an original nor a controversial observation that families trapped in poverty might be blameless for their misfortune. Likewise,it is not Bolshevism to observe that extremes of inequality – whether measured by income or opportunity – possess a corrosive effect on society. Clearly not, because those points were made on Tuesday in a thoughtful speech by Sir John Major, and the former Conservative prime minister.
That Sir John’s intervention made headlines testifies to a narrowing in recent years of Conservative discourse. It speaks to the party’s capture by a dogmatic view of the national economic interest predicated nearly exclusively on the pursuit of budget discipline,whose social cost may be regretted but not cited as reason to change course.
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Source: theguardian.com