Madam, this is the argument in favour of tax cuts

We do realise that the IPPR is well to the left of us. Vastly more statist, prodnose and interfering. But is it really too much to ask that they actually understand the arguments?

Perhaps most importantly, permanently cutting taxes has consequences – and would require a scaling back of the state.

Yes, that’s right, that is the argument in favour of tax cuts. That it would mean that the state must become smaller. It is possible to run the argument the other way, we should shrink the state in order to be able to have tax cuts. Which is attractive as an argument but it is not in fact the full pith and pit of the logic.

Liberty is when we get to do what we want. The limit to this is the damage our doing so might do to the rights and abilities of others to do the same. JS Mill is hardly a new entrant in these definitional stakes.

So, the liberal society is one in which that liberty, that freedom, is maximised. Government is indeed necessary - we are not anarcho-capitalists - but should be limited to only those things which both must be done and can only be done by government. All else is, as one constitutional document from another place puts it, to be left to the people.

Scaling back the state to accommodate tax cuts is not a problem in the slightest. Cutting taxes so that the state has to shrink is the actual argument in favour of removing the state from our wallets in the first place.