Michael Oakeshott was an English political philosopher of the conservative tradition. He died in 1990 and was all about small government, individual liberty, political conservatism and economic liberalism. Think Edmund Burke; or the Austrian political economist, Freidrich Hayek without the abstract potentialities.
Be sure of this: the one thing these policies are not about is saving money. If the government really wanted to save money, it would introduce much more stringent banking reforms. It would heavily regulate the financial sector that steered the country into this recession. It would close the tax gap, which is currently estimated to be over £100 billion a year.