Quote:
Originally Posted by RichardCoulter
And was never presented as anything else.
As the Government refuse to say where the 12 billion pounds of further cuts to the welfare budget will come from, it's only natural that people will speculate.
Why don't they just come clean and let the electorate decide if their cuts are acceptable or not?
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Because a party should be elected on a manifesto, I.e. a broad programme for government underpinned by a particular ideology or outlook. Presenting the minutiae of one specific policy (assuming they even have it finalised in that level of detail, it is actually possible that they haven't) turns the entire election debate into a referendum on £12 billion, when it ought to be about electing a government that will be responsible for annual planned expenditure of around 60 times that figure.
In any case, it's a red herring. I think you either agree in principle that £12 billion of cuts in welfare spending is desirable and achievable, or else you don't. I think it highly unlikely that anyone is going to jump from one side of the argument to the other, based on the precise detail of where the cuts would be made.