Last week was a watershed in British politics. It was a most significant week for all our futures.

There, in the middle of a Queen’s speech widely criticised for being thin and highly political, was a Bill to curb the UK’s ballooning budget deficit.

Let’s forget the absurdity of a government seeking to legislate to control its own budget. They can control the deficit in the normal way by choosing spending and taxing plans that are closer together than the current ones. We need not ask if they plan for the Chancellor to go to prison if he borrows too much.

The importance of this Bill is the recognition by this high spending high borrowing government that the party is almost over. After months of being told we need to spend, spend, spend our way out of recession, after being told the choice at the next election is between Labour “investment” and “Tory cuts”, we are now told whoever wins the election it will be cut, cut and cut again for ten years.

The Budget Bill will require the government to halve the deficit in the first four years, and reduce it every year thereafter. That means that in the first four years after the Bill the deficit has to be cut by around £100 billion or £2500 for every adult in the country.

There are only two ways this can be done. You can cut spending or you can raise taxes. As I do not think our country is undertaxed, I see it has to be done by spending less. If you tried to do it by taxing incomes and businesses more, you might end up in a vicious circle, with static or falling revenues as many companies pulled out and entrepreneurial individuals went elsewhere.

Cutting £100 billion out of a £700 billion budget is larger than anything the public sector has ever tried in my lifetime by a mile. It is not larger as a percentage than many companies have had to do to get through the recession. It is less proportionately than I have just done on the tiny part of the public sector under my control. It means doing more for less in the crucial areas like schools and hospitals, and doing less for much less in the less important areas. It certainly means a big attack on the overheads of government itself, cutting down the numerous quangos, central departments and local Council fiefdoms that have grown in the years of excess.

This Bill, and the huge and growing debt overhang that prompted it, will dominate British politics for the next decade. Gone are the easy choices. The jobs of Ministers, MPs and Councillors will be about making hard choices between spending options, and driving cost down and value and quality up remorselessly as we try to stretch every pound.

As international bodies have made clear, the UK is in a league of its own among the larger rich countries when it comes to borrowing and money printing. Far from speeding our recovery, we have stayed longer in recession than the other major economies. A sustainable recovery requires discipline over public spending and borrowing. If we do not make the changes soon, the markets will force them on us. If we do not curb the deficit we will end up with higher interest rates and higher inflation than our competitors. Our price rises are already far faster than the main economies of the world, and taking off into the new year. Last month inflation shot up by 0.6%, the fastest for 20 years. Expect more of that in the next four months, as VAT goes up and the effects of higher commodity prices flow through. We are taking too much risk with our future. That’s why we need new lower budgets, to back up this Budget Bill.