Alas, it doesn't feel like May 1997, though. Perhaps it's a good thing. I have no illusions about Cameron to be shattered.
A pity there isn't a Lib Dem Chancellor - that would have bolted them into the Government more securely than anything else - and given the unpleasant things the Chancellor will have to do the Blessed Vincent de Cable would have been a neat choice. As it is, there's still the possibility that they'll be able to distance themselves from all that. Labour will sing 'Tory cuts' from Day One - a Lib Dem in the hot seat would have made that more difficult. And besides, it may not be fair, but George Osborne still looks as if his special subject at school was holding other boys heads down the toilet and pulling the chain.
I approve of them taking on the raising of the income tax threshhold to 10K, but how will that work in practice without giving us all a tax cut ? How do you taper that off without producing higher marginal tax rates for still low-paid people ?
I can see only one answer - a rise in income tax such that, say, someone on average wages or thereabouts pays a little more than now (we have to share the pain), those below pay the same or less tax, those above pay more. And VAT will presumably be 20%.
Don't like it, but Gordon's sums haven't added up since Prudence was put on crack and made to work the streets in about 2000.