“And just as it will take more than a tack here or there to pull us through to winning the next election, it is likely to take something pretty dramatic to pull us out of the current economic mire.
“Some will say that too radical an economic shift will play against the hard-won rebranding that our party has pursued.
“I accept that we should not underestimate the importance of that work (not least the vital and correct decision of our Prime Minister to elevate the party’s commitment to the NHS) but I also believe that the electorate will judge us no more harshly in the medium-term if we take a more radical economic path now and they may just credit us if we take a bold approach that bears fruit as we near the next general election.”
Mr Osborne has been criticised by a number of senior Conservatives in the weeks following his poorly received budget, with some suggesting that it is unwise for him to retain his role as the party’s main political strategist while running the economy.
A recent poll by ComRes website found that one in five Tory supporters wanted him to resign in favour of Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrat Business Secretary.
Among the solutions Mr Stride suggested to help the economy were lower taxes and decreased public spending.
He said: “Economies do well when taxes (especially those that relate to business growth, wealth and employment creation) are low and when public expenditure is at a level that allows private enterprise to flourish (in my view at well below 40 per cent inclusive of transfers).
“The lower the proportion of the country’s output consumed by the state the more that can be injected into the non state sector in the form of lower taxes.
“We must now take the opportunity to press harder on reducing the level of public expenditure – transferring more employment out of the public sector and into the more productive private sector – something that we have already shown we can achieve with the 800,000 jobs.
“My view is that we should aim to get the level of public expenditure down dramatically from 45 per cent of GDP today (and bear in mind this is an average figure – there are parts of the country where it is way above this) to around 35 per cent
Mr Stride’s article came as a new poll by Ipsos MORI found that just one in nine European citizens expected their economy to grow stronger in the next six months. Three in 10 thought it would be weaker while 60 per cent expected it to stay around the same.
In contrast, nearly a quarter of Americans thought that their nation’s economy would grow by the end of the year.
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