Writing exclusively for PoliticsHome, Conservative MP and founding member of the Free Enterprise Group Kwasi Kwarteng says that "for too long the centre of gravity of political debate has shifted to the left".
I remember when I first got elected to Parliament thinking how lucky I was to be a new Member of Parliament. Westminster, after all, has been the principal forum for political debate in this country for several centuries. I am one of those MPs who feel that ordinary Members of Parliament should be active in contributing to wider debates about the future of our country. Westminster is, above everything else, a national Parliament, where serious issues affecting the future of the nation should be discussed openly. A number of Conservative MPs from my intake felt that, under New Labour, the political debate had shifted very much to the left. We wanted to redress that balance, and so we set up the Free Enterprise Group.
In setting up the Free Enterprise Group, we were mindful of a number of facts: in 1997, public spending constituted 37% of GDP. Today that figure is 49.4%, an increase of almost a third. Whereas the budget was balanced at £315bn in 1997, last year spending reached £710bn. Even with inflation this is a doubling of expenditure. And, of course, our tax receipts were only about £590bn. We still have a large deficit....
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