Money matters

摘要

Last week we saw a confident and bullish chancellor determined to stake out his and his party's claim to the centre ground of British politics. George Osborne is clearly a man in a hurry. All governments come and go and Mr Osborne knows that the current administration has a set time to reshape and refashion our social and fiscal landscape to its liking before the electorate looks elsewhere. I think this means four things for public services. Firstly, notwithstanding the chancellor's haste and the inherent short-termism of funding for areas like health, our planning horizons need to be firmly fixed on the medium-term, and we should use the Comprehensive Spending Review as a springboard for better planning.