Writing in the Daily Telegraph Simon Heffer contemplates the damage that Blair and Brown have done to the British economy, but then has this to say about the Cameron response:

“The Tories can’t bring themselves to contemplate removing from the payroll a single member of Mr Brown’s client state. And we shall have to carry on paying for it. The Tories might believe that the only hardship caused by their obtuse policy is that a few already wealthy middle-class people will have to dine table d’hôte rather than à la carte when they next go to a Michelin-starred restaurant, but that is absurd. Many lower-paid people could desperately do with a tax cut, to help increase their ability to stand on their own two feet rather than having to live off the state. But more to the point, many businessmen could benefit from an incentive to continue to invest in Britain, rather than put their money elsewhere. It is the Tories’ sheer economic illiteracy that is so depressing. Cutting taxes and spending is not about making the rich richer or grinding the faces of the poor by depleting their public services. It is about encouraging enterprise and prosperity, and pointing out to the public sector that just because the taxpayer happens to fund it doesn’t mean it has a licence to stand under the proverbial shower tearing up £5 notes. The “stability” that Mr Osborne talks about will come only with growth, and growth will come only with better productivity, and better productivity will come only with rigorous efficiency and spending controls and higher-quality investment in the productive sectors of the economy, which must be funded by tax cuts. Got it?”

It’s true that if they are to have a chance of being elected, the Conservatives may have to move in a direction that won’t delight everyone around here (including me), but they also need to remember that you don’t win elections without winning the argument. At the moment, they don’t even seem to be trying.