David Laws has long distinguished himself as one of the most fervent Lib Dem supporters of spending cuts. In 2012, he called for the state to be reduced to 35 per cent of GDP – the figure now projected to result from George Osborne’s post-election plans (and famously identified by the OBR as the lowest level since the 1930s). All areas bar health, education and pensions, Laws argued, should face severe austerity until Leviathan had been tamed.
But today’s Sunday Times finds the schools minister in rather different voice. Laws, who worked alongside Osborne as Chief Secretary to the Treasury after the 2010 election (until his expenses-related resignation), describes the Chancellor’s plan as “a very extreme and very right-wing suicide note because all those people who care about the education service, about the police, about the armed forces . . . will see that the plans they have put forward are hugely damaging and dangerous.”
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