The Hangover
The party is over; by this I mean the annual conference season held by the main political parties and, if anybody doubted the mess we are in, they won’t now. I view politicians with the same contempt and mistrust that many of you share; at best, all I see are self-serving and self-promoting walking egos; at the other extreme there are the corrupt and the downright seedy. In modern societies, we have controls to limit the obscene excesses seen in the Third World but in reality the only difference here is we do not shoot people…not politicians anyway. And before ten Black Marias roll up outside, I am not proposing this just yet.
I accept that establishing “fairness”, in government, is very difficult. There will always be uber-rich people and the extremely poor living side by side in any developed economy and between the two are Boris’s new darlings: the “squeezed middle”. Increasingly too, there is a growing “grey” vote, as life expectancy increases, meaning this sector can no longer be ignored as marginal or left to freeze to death quietly with yet more energy price hikes. Blair realised that the only way Old Labour would ever get back into office was by successfully courting the middle ground – so New Labour was conceived. Thirteen years later and what has changed? Same old financial ruin, same old excuses: “not our fault” – again.
I Wanna Be Like You… I Do!!!
Given that Labour is supposed to represent the working classes, with the opposition benches populated by millionaires, you can see how unlikely social equality is. Add to that the fact that the gap between rich and poor widened ever more during the Blair years as Labour shamelessly schmoozed the City and you start to question just who Labour represent. We now have Miliband’s cynical attempt to convince us all that we are “one nation” and that, because he went to a comprehensive, he’s just like you and me.
The PM fares little better; the situation we are in calls for decisive and radical action but the fact that he is dragging the millstone of Calamity Clegg’s Lib Dems in his wake does not help. Not that he has shown much in terms of strong leadership so far; his lame defence of party yob, Chief Whip Andrew Mitchell, also illuminates a weakness in his character that is worrying given the magnitude of the task the Government faces. If he cannot separate right from wrong here then something is clearly wrong.
Maxed Out On The Card
The brutal reality is that we are neck-high in debt; we owe around a trillion and annually spend a hundred billion plus more than we can afford despite the hard talk on deficit reduction. Yet they skirt around the realities weekly with inane Punch & Judy shows in the Commons with the fat puppet nodding giddily alongside Miliband, jabbing his finger manically. True, other nations are in far more perilous positions but more pertinent to the man in the street is how we deal with it.
Both parties have conflicting approaches and come the election how appealing is a manifesto that acknowledges we can no longer afford to live as we do? The sparring can only intensify. George Osborne’s conference claim that he had cut the deficit by 25% does not bare closer scrutiny, the large part of this – according to Private Eye – being reduction in investment expenditure. In reality the deficit reduction is circa 11% barely denting the annual hike in overall debt; the cuts have not even begun to bite.
Spend, Spend, Spend
Shadow Chancellor, Ed Balls, has spent two years peddling a rescue plan based largely on reducing VAT. The inference being that by reducing a £1000 television by around twenty quid this will get us all feeling “boom boom” again. His great idea now is to spend a chunk of the hoped for (but as yet unconfirmed) windfall from the sale of 4G licences, handing it over before it even touches the government coffers to the big house builders. This is the same party that destroyed local communities and lives with the abysmal and sinister Pathfinder scheme, demolishing thousands of solid homes, leaving many others boarded up to rot, whilst building little to replace them. If this man gets hold of the purse strings we are well and truly done for.
Meanwhile, the Tories struggle with the reality that the only way to balance the books will directly impact those who traditionally view them as the enemy – those who rely on the NHS, Welfare and the front line services many assume as a birth right. The costs of providing these have runaway unchecked. Whatever your politics, US Presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, uttered the unspeakable truth when he referred to his lack of appeal to a broad swathe of US voters simply because they are dependent in some way on the welfare system; odious he may be, but it hard to deny the sentiment. Turkeys don’t vote for Christmas and whatever populist sentiment demands that the rich are targeted, rest assured, the rich can afford the best advice to stay one step ahead here.
Reality Bites Hardest
This is where both mainstream parties have failed us for generations. It is ironic that the rich never had it so good under a Labour administration, but do not expect the Tories to be too hard on their traditional bedfellows. In truth, the rich already pay a significant part of the overall income tax take; the debate is whether enough pay enough; meanwhile, smoke and mirrors politics continues. Consider university fees. These may have been hiked up, but the debt is not collectable for years and, in many cases, never will be. The cynic may suggest that the real motive here was to reduce student numbers down circa 9% year on year.
The NHS continues to be a political football with the buck now passed to former Culture Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, which, given his part in the BSkyB fiasco is hardly encouraging. What chance has he of getting to grips with this monster in the next two years? Shiny new hospitals built on hugely expensive PFI funding totter on the brink of insolvency and when they do who picks up the tab? Welfare, identified by George Osborne in his speech as ripe for more pruning, remains a runaway train and, as ever, when targeting the scroungers and fiddlers there will be genuine cases who will suffer post the conference party sound bites.
We are, undeniably in this together; rich and poor have built a society based on freedoms, choices and opportunities. We have lived the dream for generations; the brutal reality is that we can no longer afford to. For politicians to suggest otherwise is to be guilty of the same deceptions they have practised for decades. Wake up, wake up… this is gong to be a long road back because we are broke.
Rohan Eli says
The Truth does really hurt…..