What will be David Cameron's biggest cock-up? His unpredicted reform of the National Health Service? Or the high-speed rail project to which he has committed £50 billion? An ambitious reorganisation of the welfare system, the Universal Credit, which relies on the unlikely success of a big it project? Or will Mr Cameron end up, against his wishes, leading Britain out of the European Union-an uber-blunder in the making? That his government will commit some terrible folly, at a cost of a few hundred million pounds if it is lucky, is highly probable. All its recent predecessors have. Margaret Thatcher's abortive poll tax wasted millions of pounds, caused riots and cost the prime minister her job. She and her successor John Major were also responsible for mis-selling personal pensions to around a million people, many of whom were persuaded to trade in their occupational plans for an alternative that they did not understand and from which they were too old or sick to profit. Their New Labour successors were just as bad: hence the vapid Millennium Dome, Gordon Brown's Ozymandian tax credits scheme and a public-private partnership for the London underground which squandered billions.
展开▼
