Sacred monsters
WE all tell politicians that we would be happy to pay more in tax to support their good causes, but that is not how we behave, at the petrol stations or the polls. We already labour for five months a year to support these causes; we have seen spend- ing on the health service rise by two-fifths in a decade, and we may think that if spending more was the right answer, it might have worked by now. (Spending more money but getting no more for it is one way to describe inflation.) Some chancellor soon is going to have to tackle the sacred monsters of the public sector. He may be driven to it, when his revenues begin to fade and his bills go on rising. Before that, with luck, he will ask whether something the size and shape of the health service is likely to give its cus- tomers the choice and quality of service they expect. I would quite like to hear a shadow chancellor say so. A chancellor who said so would be better still. He might find that it was a strong point.
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