UKIP (Toby Horton) managed to bring every question back to Brussels and immigration, Lib Dem (Di Keal) talked in detail about her district council achievements, Green (Chris Newsam) was brave enough to mention his party leader’s 500,000 homes gaff (although he still couldn’t put a price on them) and Labour (Alan Avery), incredibly, continues to play the Golden, Great Giveway and talked in sincere terms about his socialist cousins in Scotland and how he relished the opportunity to work with them for the good of the country.
We need to be honest with people. Labour’s deeply Marxist position reminded me of a recovering alcoholic who is halfway through rehab and is being nagged by his old drinking pals 'this is all too difficult, lets go down the pub'.
Yes, it’s painful and difficult, but it’s the only way. Tax, spend and borrow doesn’t work, won’t work, never has. We are collecting more tax at the 45% level than we were at 50%. France has recently, quietly cancelled its 75% supertax because it just didn’t bring in any money.
We were told that public spending will be cut to levels of the 1930's – no it won’t – but it will be cut to the level of Gordon Brown's budget of 2000/2001 which, coincidentally, was the last year that Labour balanced the books. The car crash economic events of ‘07/08 came at the end of a 10 year £400bn spending splurge that all but broke our economy.
It is so apparent that we are the only party with any economic credibility. By 2018/19 the books will balance again, an incredible achievement from the £160bn annual loss that we inherited in 2010. That will be the time for public spending to increase, a time then we can make sensible choices to focus that spending on the people most in need. We are the only party able to deliver a fairer society, but one that is fair to the taxpayer as well as to those in need of support, and one where we value and encourage aspiration, wealth creation and job creation.
And it’s not just an economic battleground, the populist message coming from the Reds and Greens include banning independent schools, shooting, fishing and horseracing and raising the top rate of income tax to 90%. Remember what we are fighting for, and how important it is that we all work together to defeat our common opponents.
Thank you to those supporters who attended this and other events and to those who have already contributed to our fighting fund, your support is so vital and much appreciated. Please help wherever you can on campaign days, by attending future hustings events or by further replenishing our campaign funds, our future depends on it.