Is the tide turning against big government?

According to journalistic lore, if an article is headed by a question, the answer to it is usually No. Perhaps this is an exception.

Brown is Labour's Edward Heath, not because he is set on closer EU integration, but because both men lacked empathy, lacked imagination, were intolerant, and got stuck deep in the ruts of their own mindsets - in Brown's case, tax and spend.

It's only a few weeks ago that Brown was calling for his government to be judged by its competence. How distant that trumpet call sounds now!

Since then we've heard dire news about the nationalised health service. Respondents to the Patients' Association say they want to continue to pay for healthcare through taxation rather than insurance. But that is not the point. The question is, should the government continue to make such a mess of running this nationalised industry, or become just a purchaser.

We have also seen the misjudgement on capital gains tax. This will prove worse than entrepreneurs' protests alone suggest: there are plenty of short term speculators quietly astonished at the drop in their tax rate from 40% to 18%, and the City especially will be working on plausible-looking schemes to convert income to capital gain. I'd guess the marginal rates will be the same again within five years.

Mr Balls has demonstrated the disadvantage of being educated in the Brown school of government, where you never consult, you just spring a policy on the country. To push through a contentious policy like clawing back part of schools' surpluses, include it as part of a larger package you put out for consultation. Then it may slip through unnoticed. If not, you can withdraw it without too much loss of face.

Easily the worst and most dangerous incompetence concerns immigration and jobs. The numbers have changed and changed again, merely reinforcing the correct perception that the government doesn't know what it's doing in this area.

This is dangerous enough. But what's worse is that the government has minimal power in this area.

There are still some signs of decent growth, including the rise in retired people working and the increase in hours worked in the economy. But it is hard to see how, with the flow of immigrants, the UK’s relatively poor starting position and an environment of weakening economic growth, the employment outlook could improve in the near term.

And the government has sacrificed power over immigration to the EU and on the altar of human rights.

Brown's promise of British jobs for British workers is generally and rightly derided for the feeble spin that it was, but the government thinks that it has found a way round its dilemma, by urging employers to introduce programmes to favour those on welfare.

This policy has several problems.

1. The last thing many of those on benefits want is a job
   
   
2. Immigrants are often better qualified, with a better work ethic
   
   
3. This is surely "indirect discrimination", since it tends to be British workers who receive British benefits. Government has promoted the concept of "indirect discrimination" to limit employers' freedom to do things it doesn't like. It deserves to be hoist with its own petard.

This starts to make incompetence look routine, which in turn makes ministers look tired. Every example of waste adds to this impression. Today, for example, the Home Office's penalty payments of £35m over cancelled centres for asylum seekers are back in the news. Every week brings more examples of public sector incompetence and waste.

Tories - panicked into conference policy announcements by the threat of an election they didn't want - are starting to look fresh in contrast with this governmental tiredness. Some commentators worry that they might let some of these policies drop as their panic recedes.

Michael Gove does sound serious about giving parents a greater choice of schools, which has to be coupled with a policy making it easier for schools to grow and contract, for new schools to be set up, and for unwanted schools to die.

If the Tories hold their nerve, their empowerment of parents can make an attractive contrast with a left-wing think tank's statist proposal that all secondary school places should be allocated by lot.

As part of the debate about jobs and migrants, attention is focusing on the unwillingness of many on welfare to give up their comfortable lifestyles for the demands of paid employment. Questions are sure to be asked about the Wisconsin policy. For instance -

• In Wisconsin, benefits could be linked to performing tasks, such as sweeping up leaves in parks. How would this sit with trades unions and minimum wage legislation?
  
  
• How would we tackle the ridiculously high levels of officially recognised incapacity?
  
  
• How would time limiting of benefits work? Would women be able to stay on benefits for decades by regularly producing children?
  
  
• What happens to the able-bodied whose entitlement to benefits has expired? Should they be compulsorily supported by taxpayers, or helped through charities by those who actively want to continue to pay for their support?

On welfare the theme will have to be one of tough love, with limited reliance on taxpayers for a temporary hand up rather than lifelong support. The government could return welfare savings to taxpayers as a lump sum dividend each year, to make them more prominent.

A third theme should be that the government wastes taxpayers' money almost every time it spends it. Governments need to curb their enthusiasm to do everything.

What of big government on a wider canvas? Across the EU, migration may become a pressure point before the euro. Certainly if lawless Romanian migrants set up shanty towns outside London, as they have done outside Rome, the government would find the legal remedies at its disposal entirely inadequate.

Maybe that is only a matter of time.