What absolute twaddle! I was getting quite annoyed there with the poor reasoning and low standard of journalism - then I get to the end of the article and find that the authors are actually government ministers. No surprise there then.

How's this for nonsensical point-scoring:

"The central principle of this next phase of government should be the extension of power to the people. It is a principle that the Conservatives are especially ill-equipped to embody. It is an egalitarian principle, where they remain essentially elitist."

'Power to the people' is surely one of the core Conservative principles. The authors then go on to suggest that actually we need to swell the size of the 'state' to give power back to the people. Undisguised socialism, diluted only very slightly with some vague waffle about making public services 'more personal'! Keep it up chaps, the next election is yours for the losing!

Adam Neilson, Birmingham,

Hasn't Labour learnt that money won't solve the education problem? It will be another huge waste after NHS. Give parents the voucher and let them chose where to send their kids; let good schools, state or private, to expand with the voucher income. That is the way to improve the overall education results. In terms of class size, some low achieving schools has quite small class sizes, simply because parents don't want to send their kids there. The performance remains low.

Mark, Birmingham,

I have not got a clue as to how you can call your article 'conservatism'. I would call it a socialist manifesto that could have written by Michael Foot. To coin Ronald Reagan 'the government is not the answer, the government is the problem'. One thing that people with 'visions', do not have is the ability think beyond what economists call 'stage one'. Two clues, the law of unintended consequences, are you interested in 'results' or process?. Think these things through, generally the results of not doing this,means the results are not what the 'vision' had envisioned. Think of all the social problems that have been 'solved' with such disasterous results.

Desmond Taylor, Houston, USA Texas

To argue that the purpose of government policy is to enable people to "get on" is far too faclle. "Getting on"" in our kind of society simply means elbowing others aside in the rat-race for riches. Rather, government should be about helping people to "get off " the treadmill and onto the path that leads to individual, social and planetary well-being.

Stan Rosenthal, Lindfield, West Sussex

We don't need ID cards and more draconian laws in your aspirational and enabling state gentlemen. Less state interference not more,is what I and millions of others will be voting for at the next election. If you don't alter course, your ship is going to hit the rocks with an almighty crash.

Michael Rigby, Blackburn, England

If you leave private medical practice and its charges unregulated you provide no sensible alternetive to the NHS. One should not have to choose between a system in which one can be assured of the practitioners training and experience but has to endure a poor environment and a system wherein one cannot be certain that the practitioner knows the job but only that one is going to be ripped off. This is one area where we need to be empowered.

Robert, London,

The following statement says it all for me: "The Budget’s goal of narrowing the funding gap between state and private schools gives us the platform. We now need a debate about how that funding can be matched with reform so that more equal funding leads to more equal life chances.". Equal funding has nothing to do with the life chances of state educated pupils - the problem is cultural and structural. Put a group of motivated pupils together who have comparable ability and a good teacher will get excellent results. The problem with state education IS the comprehensive principal and until that particularly damaging theology is abandoned, Gordon Brown will simply be throwing good money after bad!

Richard Marriott, Kidderminster, England

You say 'Our history might have been very different if we had confronted the Empire illusion, shaped the European Union from the start and reformed our economy in the way Germany and Japan were rebuilding theirs'. As, according to an EU opinion poll reported last week , 53% of Europeans think that Britain has the biggest say in international affairs of any member state, compared with 9% who think this is true of Germany, and 6% of France, why would we want our history to be different?

Maritz, London,

This is just another arguement for greater centralized control, under the guise of *people* power.
No one is closer to people than their local goverment. The greatest hinderence to people power is that no matter how much control the central goverment gives to local goverment in theory, without the ability to raise and spend funds as they see fit, rather than some Minister in London see's fit, the whole idea is worthless.
After 80 years of Communism and many other socialist goverments, it should be clear that centralism isn't the wayto go. The central goverment must give up power that it has horded to decide schools policy, land usage, and many other areas. Let the central goverment worry about defense, commerace, immigration and foriegn affairs....let the smaller local goverments worry about peoples everyday needs.
If it's needed, create another level of goverment similar to the US's states as a buffer between the central goverment and the local goverment.
Socialism is a threat.

joshua, Buckeye/Oxford, Arizona, US/Oxford England

The battle lines are aspiration versus conservation
James one word and I would comment. You totally and purposely missed out the word PRESPIRATION. Aspiration fine, but the conservations lie in the tiling, you know that hard work you do in the prison then you come out to become politicians? You missed that.

Firozali A.mulla MBA PhD, Dar-Es-Salaam, Tanzania

This is all a lot of tripe. The 'enabling state' is big brother and negates the possibility of people being genuinely in control of their own attempts to fulfil themselves.
It is true that the 'modern' Conservative party is, in the matter of the public services, a throwback to the wretched Butskellite gang but there is still time for them to come to their senses and learn lessons from other countries.

Dr J Findlater, Carnforth,

"The Cameron thesis is that if the State withdraws, then miraculously the people are granted power."
There is no underlying miracle my socialist comrades (as Gordon Brown would put it). The reality is quite simple. The State sponsored social engineering will be the first debacle and individual merit will get a real chance of promotion and recognition.
Can you imagine a society where the intemperence and incompetence of State is replaced by meritorious individuals whose conduct reflects human genius and which in turn motivates other individuals of our society to achieve similar successes? Of course it will be disasterous for Labour if people found motivation to excel rather rely on Government for solutions to every problem in one's life. What an egotistical article about presumed merits of politicians when there are none.

Prabhat, UK,