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It’s all relative, of course. The restraint the government has imposed in recent years is only from the all-time peak to which the same government pushed spending in 2009. Indeed, measured in constant dollars per citizen, this government is responsible for 10 of the 12 highest-spending years in our history (see chart), including the current fiscal year.

It never should have gone so heavily into deficit as it did — the recovery had already begun, and the subsequent contribution of any alleged fiscal “stimulus” was negligible — but it did so to the cheers of most of the commentariat, when they were not demanding more. So it is a bit much for the same people now to complain at the resulting increase in the debt.

Sourpusses like me might — but even we would have to admit the Tories have done a better job of bringing spending back into line than we expected. And while there is some loosening of the purse strings in the current budget — spending will increase by 3.4% in the current fiscal year, and 4.2% the next — this is a long way from the kind of pre-election spending sprees that once were traditional.

The proposition the Tories put before the public, then, is not small government, or even smaller government, but big government that lives within its means. After 10 years of Conservative rule, the federal government does virtually everything it ever did, pokes its nose into just as many areas of national life, taxes, subsidizes, and regulates very nearly as much, and at considerably greater expense (even after six years of restraint, spending is still 12% higher, after inflation and population growth, than it was when the Tories took power). It just does all this, now, barely, in line with the revenues available to it.