As we all know from Cliff Robertson in Spiderman, “With great power comes great responsibility.”

So we are not being partisan if we criticise President Obama or Gordon Brown, Prime Minister of the UK – it is simply that they are the ones in power, therefore they are the ones with the greatest responsibility.

However, opposition politicians also have a responsibility: the obligation to offer a viable alternative.

It is an obligation with which the Republicans in the USA and the Conservatives in the UK are having difficulties when it comes to economic policy.

It was their failure to come up with a convincing narrative on the economy that cost the Republicans the 2008 election. As a result, many Americans still blame the younger President Bush for the recession. This is probably a bit unfair. True, his federal deficits were a contributory factor, but not the decisive factor. In any case, blame for those deficits must be shared with the Democratic Congress, and they have increased enormously since then under a Democratic President. Yet, irrespective of how we got here, the problem remains: how do we deal with those deficits? The Republicans need to show that they have moved on from the fiscal indiscipline of the Bush Junior years.

Of course, no one can blame Britain’s Conservatives for their country’s government deficits – they have been out of power since 1997, when they handed on an economy in a very healthy condition. However, their current leader and finance spokesman have yet to convince the voters or the markets that they have a plan to reduce the deficits they would inherit if they win this year’s General Election. The pound fell on news of polls indicating that the Election might be indecisive – because of a widely held perception that Conservative policy is itself indecisive.

Wise old hands like the business spokesman Kenneth Clarke say there will have to be massive spending cuts, but the inexperienced young leader, David Cameron, seems reluctant to accept the obvious and keeps hedging on the subject.

Making deficit reduction sound attractive to voters is indeed a tough sell. However, those of us with business experience know that the best strategy with a tough sell is to make a virtue out of necessity – and tell the truth...

“Countries prosper most when governments interfere least. Less interference requires less bureaucracy. Less bureaucracy means lower spending. Lower spending reduces deficits.”

A party that ran on that simple truth – and sounded like they really believed it – would get our vote.