Roger Helmer writes: So far, the Conservative Party has done half a job on the credit crunch. We've rightly blamed Gordon Brown. While Britain faces global problems, Brown has left our country in a poor position to cope with the global weather. We have spoken of "failing to fix the roof while the sun was shining", and that message seems to be getting through in the public consciousness.

Brown himself has described the recent extended boom as "The Age of Irresponsibility", apparently failing to notice that he himself presided over the irresponsibility, first as Chancellor, then as PM. He has bored us to death by repeatedly proclaiming "the end of Tory boom and bust", before ushering in the biggest bust anyone can remember. These are words that have come back to bite his ankle.

Now he, and Alistair Darling, speak of a Keynesian solution. They will borrow even more, and spend on great infrastructure projects for the future. Surely Keynes must be turning in his grave to hear his name associated with such an extraordinarily ill-advised and profligate proposal. True, Keynes favoured counter-cyclical spending policies, so that governments would pay down debt in the good times, and be prepared to support spending through a recession. Indeed governments have to be prepared to borrow in a recession as tax revenues drop, while welfare and unemployment commitments increase. But Keynes never proposed that governments should build up debt in the boom times, and then throw good money after bad in a recession.

Brown should listen to a previous Labour Prime Minister, Jim Callaghan, who rightly said that "You can't spend your way out of recession". Or he should ponder the recent letter from a group of distinguished economists, including Ruth Lea, who have warned of the dangers of further indebtedness, and rightly pointed out that the real effect of major infrastructure projects would kick-in too late to help (assuming that this recession is shorter-lived than the last one in Japan).

Although we have pinned the blame on Brown, nonetheless he has contrived to look Prime Ministerial — he seems to relish a financial crisis — and he has achieved some recovery in the polls. This half-bounce will dissipate, however, as the bankruptcies, the job losses and the home repossessions start to bite.

Now we Conservatives have to do the other half of our job, which is to present the British public with a better solution. And a credible solution is not hard to find. I was pleased to see that George Osborne has called for one key element — lower interest rates — today. But we must also have the courage to call for serious spending cuts. We must face down the inevitable Labour spin about "Tory Cuts". The public know that families and businesses are having to cut back, and they will understand why in these hard times the government has to cut back as well. The Gershon Report identified considerable areas for savings, but we must go further. We must take a chain-saw to the proliferation of Quangoes and agencies that are growing like Japanese knot-weed over the body politic, and choking the life out of it. Too many superannuated politicians are enjoying sinecures at the tax-payer's expense. This has to stop. We must dismantle Labour's expensive, unnecessary and ineffective regional structures. (We could also save up to £100 billion a year by leaving the EU — which there are excellent political and economic reasons to do anyway).

So two elements of the solution are lower interest rates and lower government spending. The third is lower taxes. (If it were prudent to borrow more, the borrowing should be used for immediate tax cuts — but sadly it is not prudent to do so). I do not believe that in today's circumstances we can credibly offer immediate tax cuts. But we must do so as soon as the storm shows signs of abating. We must make clear that we will cut taxes as so as we can prudently do so, and that lower taxes will be a primary objective of Conservative policy. Not to reward the rich, but to promote economic growth.

A three-pronged policy. Lower interest rates. Lower spending. And as soon as we can, lower taxes. Not perhaps the most attractive policy — restraint and retrenchment never are attractive, but then given the choice, we wouldn't be starting from here. But a lot more attractive than Labour's debt-driven descent into the abyss.