Why the Cuts?

It behoves the Chairman of the local Conservative Association to defend a Conservative-led government, even a coalition that has to make unpleasant and painful cuts. But first let me talk about one of the best MPs Burnley never had- and I don't, on this occasion, refer to Richard Ali. No, I'm talking about one of the few men to lose a General Election in Burnley to a Conservative. I'm talking about the Labour Representation Committee candidate of 1900, Philip Snowden. I hope the irony of a life-long Conservative admiring a leading Labour politician is not too great to bear. Snowden became Labour's first ever Chancellor of the Exchequer, and told the Commons in 1924:

It is no part of my job as Chancellor of the Exchequer to put before the House of Commons proposals for the expenditure of public money. The function of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, as I understand it, is to resist all demands for expenditure made by his colleagues and, when he can no longer resist, to limit the concession to the barest point of acceptance.

Had the modern Labour Party managed to offer us a man or woman of this stature and wisdom over the past decade, instead of a Gordon Brown or a Kitty Ussher, then the current government would have no painful cuts to make nor gaping black holes to fill.

Alan Marsden

Chairman