Mr. Chakrabortty has a plan

We’d not say we endorse the details but the base idea is correct:

The big picture is that the UK has been through a shockingly bad five years, in which people are on average worse off than they were at the start of this parliament, even while taxes are reaching a record high – and still rising.

….

Analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies suggests that, whichever of the two parties comes to power in July, day-to-day spending on everything outside health, defence and education is promised to fall by around £20bn. That is roughly equal to shutting the entire Home Office, or closing the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. The next time a journalist interviews a Labour frontbencher they should ask which of those options they would prefer.

Taxes are indeed high and rising. Government is swallowing ever more, to the point of too much, of everything that everyone does. Changing this would be a thoroughly good idea. Partly because if people retain more of what they do then more will be done thereby boosting growth. Partly simply because people retaining more of what they do is a good idea in itself.

But it’s not possible to shave a little here, pare a tad there. Government, bureaucracy, does not work that way as C Northcote Parkinson so memorably analysed. The answer is to simply stop doing something. To close, entirely, some arm of the bureaucracy. Perhaps only catch and release for the bureaucrats but otherwise the Carthaginian solution - raze and plough with salt.

To reduce government expense means to simply remove government from some to many parts of our lives. DEFRA, DCMS, why not?

It is not possible to merely cut government budgets and therefore taxes - it is necessary to cut government.