George Osborne promises a surplus

Here’s our serious plan for a grown-up country. First, sound money. The bedrock of any sustained recovery and improved living standards is economic stability.

That is what the hard work and sacrifice of the last three years has all been about.
In that time we have brought the deficit down by a third. And the British public know that whoever is elected will face some very hard choices.

Let me tell you the principles I bring to that task. Our country’s problem is not that it taxes too little.

It is that its government spends too much. So while no responsible Chancellor ever rules out tax changes, I think it can be done by reducing spending and capping welfare, not by raising taxes.

That’s my plan. And surely the lesson of the last decade is that it’s not enough to clean up the mess after it’s happened?

You’ve got to take action before it happens. It should be obvious to anyone that in the years running up to the crash this country should have been running a budget surplus.

That’s what we mean when we say they didn’t fix the roof when the sun was shining. Let us never make that same mistake again.

Never again should anyone doing my job be so foolish, so deluded, as to believe that they have abolished the age-old cycle of boom and bust.

So I can tell you today that when we’ve dealt with Labour’s deficit, we will have a surplus in good times as insurance against difficult times ahead.

Provided the recovery is sustained, our goal is to achieve that surplus in the next Parliament. 

That will bear down on our debts and prepare us for the next rainy day. That is going to require discipline and spending control.

For if we want to protect those things we care about, like generous pensions and decent healthcare, and buy the best equipment for the brave men and women who fight in our armed forces, all of us are going to have confront the costs of modern government – and cap working age welfare bills.

And only if we properly control public expenditure will we be able to keep lowering taxes for hardworking people in a way that lasts.

I’ve never been for tax cuts that are borrowed. I want low taxes that are paid for.
We also want to go on investing in the essential infrastructure of our country - the roads and railways and science and communications that are the backbone of the future economy.

So we should commit, alongside running a surplus and capping welfare, to grow our capital spending at least in line with our national income.

 He doesn't see that this is contradictory.

These principles will form the foundation of our public finance policy and I will set out the details next year.

And for those who ask: Is this necessary?I say: What is the alternative? To run a deficit for ever? To leave our children with our debts? To leave Britain perilously exposed to the next storm that comes?

This crisis took us to the brink. If we don’t reduce our debts, the next could push us over.
Let us learn from the mistakes that got Britain into this mess. Let us vow: never again
This time we’re going to run a surplus. This time we’re going to fix the roof when the sun is shining.

Much more nonsense. Read the whole speech.

This plan is based on wage suppression and increasing exports to run a fiscal surplus by offsetting domestic consumption by growing the export industry in an attempt to emulate Germany, Japan, and China as surplus countries.  It's the same old mercantilist "beggar-thy-neighbor" stance that made Britain of old a colonial, imperialist power.

politics.co.uk
George Osborne's conference speech in full
(h/t Ralph Musgrave via email)