Letters From A Tory Daily views on British politics and the Conservative Party from a centre-right thinker who writes letters on his blog to politicians, journalists and many others.

“There is an air of breathtaking unreality in Westminster and Whitehall that reminds me of 1975.”

-  Lord Owen, foreign secretary under Jim Callaghan in the late 1970s, in today’s Sunday Telegraph warning that Britain’s economy might have to be subject to “IMF disciplines” that would require painful public spending cuts to halt a “precipitate loss of confidence”.  Lord Owen sounded the alert about the twin threats of a falling pound and inflation, which crippled Callaghan’s government, being repeated under Mr Brown, stating that “hard choices need to be taken now, not postponed until after an election in 2010.”