Bernard Ingham: Dispense the facts and trust the people over cuts

He thought I was hopelessly unbalanced in my approach to the media. Indeed, he accused me of being obsessed with the tabloids – and notably the Sun – to the neglect of the broadsheets, as they then were.

For a man who has always admired his own considerable intellect, he was curiously incapable of grasping my point that governments need to explain things to all levels of society and not just those they think are on their intellectual level. On this, I thought he was obtuse.

Nick Clegg does not seem to be quite so dense. At least he tried briefly at the Liberal Democrat party conference to put the coalition's public spending cuts in perspective.

With a hint of exasperation, he explained that, even after all the slashing that is going on, government would still be spending 41 per cent of its GDP (national income) – far more, he might have said, than it has historically aimed to do since the Second World War. What is more, Labour had intended to cut its bloated spending by 44bn-52bn, according to the Treasury, by 2014-15 compared with the coalition's 83bn.

In other words, the Con-Dems are proposing to cut government spending by roughly 20bn a year compared with Labour's proposed annual removal of 13bn. In practice, they intend to cut bloated public spending this year by little more than four per cent compared with Labour's intended 2.5 per cent.

We really have to ask ourselves – and especially the Morley and Outwood spendthrift, Ed Balls – whether another 7bn a year, or 28bn over four years, will sink UK plc. Don't forget we have an unsustainable budget deficit of 156bn, not to mention the need to finance a trade gap of up to 15bn a month. Whether we like it or not, we are deeply in the red.

Who would be in Chancellor George Osborne's shoes. What has he done to deserve this hairshirt?

But let us not misplace our sympathies. What are politicians for? Is it, as Bismark claimed, to practise the art of the possible? Or is it, as Mrs Thatcher argued, to make possible that which is thought to be impossible?

In my book, they are there to decide what needs to be done in the national interest and then persuade the people to go along with it, preferably willingly. All too often governments are so preoccupied with a problem – in this case keeping credit rating agencies and investors sweet because of the level of debt – that they forget to explain the situation simply to Mr and Mrs Joe Bloggs. They also take too much understanding for granted.

The coalition is not very good at speaking with one voice, but there is little doubt that the public recognise Britain cannot go on as if there had been no global financial crisis. They grasp that something pretty drastic is required, though the Labour Party has clouded the issue by claiming the Con-Dems are going over the top.

But whether they are prepared for the nasty consequences for individuals from cutting back, however modestly in arithmetical terms, is another matter. We are now only weeks away from the pinch being felt and perhaps from the unions, under Ed Miliband, reacting in their damaging, neanderthal way.

It is therefore time the coalition followed Clegg's tentative start and really set out its stall as if its life depended on it – as it may.

Since the war, governments have tried to hold a balance between public and private spending by keeping their call below 40 per cent of GDP. They began to fail in the mid-1960s and Mrs Thatcher was the first to get it back to below 40 per cent in 1987. After that, 1995 apart, both Tory and Labour governments kept it below that until last year when it soared to over 45 per cent.

We are now back to the crisis levels of the mid-'70s – and spending vastly more than then because national income (GDP) has soared since Mrs Thatcher's time. Do we want to go back to the bad old days? If not, cut.

It is time Andy Coulson, David Cameron's media boss and former editor of the News of the World, exhibited his talent for explaining the mess in four letter words. Forget snooty Lord Lawson. Dispense the facts and trust the people.