In other words, the decentralising and de-bureaucratising programme aims to achieve substantially better economic, social and environmental outcomes for any given level of input — stabilising our public finances in the medium term in the right way, by getting decisively more bang for the taxpayer's buck.

Of course, during the early period after the next election, and before these reforms have begun to produce an increasing bang for the buck, the bucks themselves will need to be very carefully managed. But that, I fear, is inevitably the case, regardless of who wins the next general election. 

The question is not, therefore, whether there is a coherent Conservative programme, nor whether that programme can be afforded in an age of austerity, but rather whether anyone else is offering any serious alternative and affordable programme to achieve the social, economic and environmental ends sought by most of us across the political spectrum. I recognise that this is not the question which it is currently fashionable to ask — but I suspect that it is the question that people will be asking themselves by the time of the next general election.