David Cameron's remarks last week that post-recession Britain must learn to "do more with less" were his clearest indication that the massive spending cuts his government introduced to tackle the economic crisis are no temporary balm, as first promised, but a new template for the country.
Dressed in white tie and tails at the extravagant annual Lord Mayor's Banquet in London's Guildhall, where he addressed some of city's most rich and powerful, the prime minister said getting the nation's debts under control "means something more profound" than temporarily re-jiggering public spending.
"It means building a leaner, more efficient state," he said.
To some of his critics, those words appear to confirm that he's exploited the crisis to carry out a conservative transformation possibly more radical than that of his model Margaret Thatcher.
They include patrons of the Nicholas Nickleby, a pub in north London's gritty Finsbury Park neighborhood, where glasses are set down heavily when Cameron's name comes up.
"Kids are going to wake up homeless on Christmas. And David Cameron is telling us to do more with less?" said John McMenemie, a chef and trainee cab driver. "F**k off. You do more with less."
The pub's carpet is stained and a sign behind the bar reads "We Have a Happy Hour in This Pub - When You Have All Gone Home."
There have never been so many young people out of work in this area, says a gray-haired patron before stamping outside to smoke a hand-rolled cigarette.
Cameron moved into No. 10 Downing Street in 2010 as the economy was slowly recovering from the global economic collapse but facing its own debt crisis.
His Conservative Party promised the "Big Society," a country that would substitute volunteer and community-led initiatives for government-funded services, accompanied by the biggest spending cuts since World War II.
"I didn't come into politics to make cuts," he told Britons in his New Year's address that year. "We're tackling the deficit because we have to - not out of some ideological zeal."
Now that the UK leads the European Union in economic growth, that no longer appears to be the case.
In another sign the Conservatives are distancing themselves from earlier suggestions the cuts would be temporary, the party recently deleted 10 years of speeches leading up to 2010 from its online archives.
Some corners support the vision of a permanently leaner state, and not just in London's financial district the City.
