Tact has not been the government's strong point. Realising that we no longer need a publicly-controlled supply of pit props, its plans to sell off government-owned forests contrived to make the Forestry Commission popular. Then it advanced on health, retreated and paused to regroup. Moving on to planning regulations, it has provoked first the National Trust and then the Women's Institute. Already a group of backbenchers has dug in to preserve the Misbourne Valley in the Chilterns from the high-speed railway builders. The Metropolitan Railway has been there since 1892, but can now be forgiven. 

If the planning laws are complex and the planning process dilatory, if the presumption — now challenged — is "it won't be allowed", they are not alone. There are the employment laws, which do so much to discourage employment. Every so often the European Commission puts a new layer of bricks on this obstacle. The health and safety rules mean that it is always safer to do nothing. The guide to the tax code has trebled in size in the last two decades. 

A promise to tackle the supply side will not earn the Chancellor a standing ovation, even if his proposals  come with a camouflage coat of green paint, but he needs to make the best of them. If we wouldn't be allowed, why doesn't the government do something about it? Sometimes the best it can do is to get out of the way.