The Conservatives have come up with their latest bright idea - a new, disciplined approach to public spending is revealed today, with rapid response teams being planned, in order to put a stop to inappropriate spending and waste. In other words it is a managerialist's wet dream and is the kind of thing you would expect to be dreamt up by a wet-behind-the-ears Tory boy with no experience of the real world beyond his gilded cage. Since the author of the ideas is George Osborn and this is precisely what he is, I suppose we shouldn't be surprised.
Thatcherism worked because it bypassed the civil service entirely by simply closing things down or selling them off. Osborn appears to be betting that he can avoid these kinds of unpleasantries but can still get the civil service to behave like rational people rather than like bureaucrats.
The odds that he can actually acheive that in practice must be very, very long.