Today's papers respond to the Conservatives' plans for a £4 billion tax cut funded by £35 billion of savings in government spending.

FT

The challenge for the Tories is to draw a clear line between the tax-and-spend, big-government Labour Party and a lower-tax, smaller-state Conservative administration. This will not be achieved by a fiscal package that makes marginal adjustments in the spending and tax totals, while continuing to promise growth in the exchequer's contribution to public services.

Guardian

By offering to sustain spending on most areas of government activity from health and education to defence and transport while both cutting taxes by £4 billion and the budget deficit by £8 billion Mr Letwin is trying - unpersuasively - to have it both ways. His theoretical £35 billion of savings, £23 billion of them reallocated in departments, could not remain painless for long. Yet the striking feature of yesterday's interim announcement is not what the Conservative Party plans to cut but what it plans to keep. In effect the package concedes victory to Labour after a decade-long battle to set the terms of political debate

Times

In aiming to cut waste and taxes, the Tories have the right intentions. There are devils in the detail, but the proposals set out yesterday deserve to be taken seriously in what will be a gruelling pre-election campaign.

Independent

If anyone still harboured doubts that the coming election will be at least a three-way contest, yesterday's crowded political schedule should have dispelled them for good. With the Liberal Democrats launching their "pre-manifesto", the Tories presenting the results of their tax and spending review, and Labour jamming between them a "pre-election" press conference, we find ourselves in the midst of what is being called a "pre-campaign" campaign. And the term is not vain. This is no phoney war; nor is it mere preliminary skirmishing. The battle for the hearts and minds of the British electorate is already under way.

Telegraph

Even if the Tories are able to fight the campaign on the issue of tax, they will have to do so with more panache than they have shown hitherto. Labour will try to present Tory abolition or privatisation of quangos and job creation schemes as extreme. The Conservative response must be robust, not apologetic. If they cannot advocate their policies with conviction, the public will not believe them. Just as Gladstone said that money should fructify in the pockets of the people, or George W Bush promised Americans a refund, so Mr Howard needs a memorable language in which to justify lower taxes. The moral and economic case for tax cuts is overwhelming. The question is: are the Tories now ready to make it?

Sun

Cutting £35 billion of waste in the public services is not as hard as Labour try to make out. After all, their own efficiency study highlighted £22 billion of waste to attack. Labour's scaremongering spin that the Tories would damage public services is unconvincing. Alan Milburn snipes that voters will only see skies full of flying pigs. That's a bit rich. Voters know that during eight years under Labour there has been a considerable amount of pork in the air.

Mirror

Anyone planning to follow the campaign is going to need stamina - plus a steely determination not to be fooled. The sort of seductive promises we can expect started with the Tory pledge to cut taxes and spend more on health and education. It can't happen in the real world of course. But that isn't where desperate politicians live. And Michael Howard is as desperate as they come.

Mail

One day the truth will dawn that this country can't go on expanding at the rate Messrs Blair and Brown are encouraging without courting public disaster. The public sector is simply incapable of carrying the weight of such unproductive inefficiency. Getting that message across is the challenge for Michael Howard and Oliver Letwin.

Express

Labour has shown itself to be a party that still believes in big government and big taxation. If it returns to power we will have even more of the same. The Daily Express believes in less interference, less waste, less taxation and getting value for money. And most of the billions that is spent on services should be on the frontline, not on bureaucratic paper pushers.