Radical vision of a liberal state As readers of this newspaper will know, we have often been critical of the way that the Coalition's more ambitious plans for reforming Britain's public services and cutting state expenditure have been opposed by the Liberal Democrat portion of the Government. So we are pleased to be able to report today that there is at least one Lib Dem who not only thinks as the Conservatives do on those issues, but proposes solutions even more radical than those which many Conservatives are prepared to endorse. The resignation of David Laws as Chief Secretary to the Treasury in 2010 was a great loss to the Cabinet. As he reveals in the interview we publish today, he is a classical liberal in the tradition of Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill: he believes that the state should keep to a minimum the amount of money that it spends and that it can only acquire by raising taxes. Mr Laws thinks that great liberal reformers of the past, such as Gladstone and Lloyd George, would be shocked to discover that expenditure by the British state now accounts for nearly 50 per cent of the whole economy. Mr Laws wants to see its share reduced to about 35 per cent, with taxes falling proportionately. He thinks that the state spends our money inefficiently, and that the majority of taxpayers do not support keeping taxes at the high rate needed to finance the level of services the state provides today. We profoundly agree. He is also right that his view of the "minimal state" is in line with the traditions of his party. The inheritor of those traditions, and perhaps the most extensive modern-day elaboration of them, was the Conservative Party under Margaret Thatcher. It would be wonderful if Mr Laws could persuade today's Lib Dems to adopt and embrace the ideas embodied in liberalism's venerable traditions. But that may be too much to expect. Still, if Mr Laws returns to the Cabinet - and we hope he will do so soon - then there is a greater chance that the tax-cutting, state-reducing, growth-enhancing agenda to which the Tories say they are attached will be adopted. Roll on that day.