Rory Broomfield: Who will win in the reshuffle? There is an alternative.

Will David Cameron favour his Backbenchers in the predicted reshuffle, will there be more Liberal Democrats in more Ministries, or will he stick to his current cohort of Ministers?

There is little doubt that there will be some change to the complexion of the Cabinet, however, this is missing the point. With the UK currently in recession and with the Government “most unlikely” to meet its target to eliminate Britain’s structural deficit by 2015, the direction of travel needs to change.

TFA’s Director, Simon Richards, recently wrote in the Mail Online that the Tories need renewal and not reshuffle. In it he noted:

“Between 1975 and 1979, under a leader with firm beliefs and an interest in developing ideas and policies, the Conservatives put together a coherent approach to economics and government which enabled them to transform a country in near terminal decline. Thatcher – and her brilliant ‘guru’, Sir Keith Joseph - had the courage, intelligence and respect for intellectual argument to reshape the Conservative Party from the failed corporatism favoured by Heath to the dynamic free market ideas championed by Hayek and Friedman.”

The sentiments behind these words ring as true for this Coalition Government as they do for the Conservative Party.  The basic idea is simple: a firm belief in developing free market ideas coupled with the courage to implement them turned around a country in near terminal decline once and it can happen again.

The Rt. Hon David Davis MP also seems to thinks so.

Davis is to set out his ideas for economic recovery today at the Chartered Accountants’ Hall in a lecture hosted by the Centre for Policy Studies. In it he is expected attack the Government for lacking a growth policy and call on it to cut taxes, public spending and labour-market regulation in order to promote growth by freeing up the economy and its people.

This is quite a different path to what the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, has taken in the past and the “there is no alternative” impression that he gave in yesterday’s Andrew Marr Show interview.

In an interview with The Sunday Telegraph Davis also notes that the Government’s position on Europe is indirectly harming the recovery:

“The Government’s rhetoric has been that it is in our interests to do everything in our power to let the eurozone survive — I don’t agree… Membership of the eurozone is doing serious harm to these countries [Portugal, Ireland, Greece, Spain].”

He believes that a managed break-up would be less harmful to our economy.

Someone should tell the Government this as it is still pushing forward the European Union Bill which, according to the House of Lords Library, “enables the UK to ratify an amendment to Article 136 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. The amendment will give legal basis to the creation of a permanent European Stability Mechanism (ESM).”

This Mechanism may be used to prop up the eurozone and result in the prolonged agony that is being inflicted on both the zone and on the UK economy.

This, along with spending and taxes, needs to be cut to allow for a renewal in Government policy and not just a reshuffling of people.

In short: there needs to be real change and there is an alternative.

The author of this article is Rory Broomfield. He tweets @rorybroomfield