This is CBS High on the World. I'm John Bachelor. I welcome Joseph Sternberg, my colleague.

He's a member of the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal. He writes politically

economics column based in London. And he's observing right now the 12 years, almost 13

years in power, conservative party, the Tories, led by Rishi Sunak and the Chancellor of the

Exchequer, Jeremy Hunt. The presentation by the conservatives is unusual in that they

are right now presenting through the Chancellor's voice, raising taxes in a recession, mighty

strange. So Joe, I commend your most recent column because it sorted some things out to

me as to how we got into this fix. 12 years in power and you're just discovering that

you want to raise the money you've passed on to the NHS and other parts of the welfare

state. This doesn't seem recognizably the Tory party. How did we get here? When did

it start, Joe, that the Tories became spend thrifts? Good evening to you.

Hey, John. I mean, it started more than a decade ago. In fact, even before they came

into power for the first time in 2010 with kind of a big adjustment about the way the party

was thinking about sort of government and government spending and what their priorities

should be. And then these trends kind of accelerated when they came into power in 2010 when Britain

was still reeling from the effects of the 2008 financial panic and the recession that followed

it. And the government finances were they inherited were a mess. What government spending

is the highest proportion of gross domestic product or the economy since the 70s, debt

and the deficit seeming to be spiraling out of control. And I think the conservative party

solution at that point, instead of really explicitly going for economic growth, was to focus

on a certain kind of budget restraint which would involve opportunistically cutting in

some places, but trying as much as possible to avoid any bigger debate about what the

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