Pasties, petrol and Peter Cruddas are obscuring the bigger picture - at our expense and the Tories' gain.
The video to Radiohead’s Karma Police shows a car pursuing an exhausted man down a dark road. At the end of the video, as Thom Yorke sings ‘For a minute there, I lost myself, I lost myself’, the beleaguered escapee sees a line of petrol leaking from the car as it reverses away from him, presumably preparing to finish him off. He fumbles in his pocket, and produces a packet of matches. He puts his hands behind his back in apparent resignation, before dropping a lit match onto the trail of petrol. The flames run towards the car, which reverses frantically before being engulfed by flames.
Perhaps in Coalition Britain, the anonymous driver of the pursuing car would have had the luck to run out of petrol just before reaching his quarry – one of the few true beneficiaries of the fuel tanker drivers’ strike that we are all supposed to be so concerned about – and there would have been no escape for the poor guy on the run. By the time his incendiary opportunity arises, he is exhausted – maybe, in Coalition Britain, he would have had the energy to carry on running until help appeared, deprived of the diet of pasties and booze that shrank his stamina and bloated his gut by the newly prohibitive pricing measures of our apparently health-conscious government overlords.
In Coalition Britain, the predator and prey of this sinister pursuit would look at the shining example of two ideologically incompatible political parties putting their differences aside for the good of the nation and think ‘we’re all in this together’ – the poor man on the road could get a lift home, picking up some cold sausage rolls for the wife, kids and overtaxed granny on the way.
For a minute there, we all lost ourselves. As queues grow at petrol stations (although, I’d like to note, the one outside my window is having a quieter day than usual) and politicians extol the virtues of hot pastry products to an eager media, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development is quietly and calmly announcing that we’re heading back into recession. And nobody seems to care.
For the last couple of weeks, it was almost possible to believe that the Tories had reasons to be worried. Polling numbers took a hit after the budget announcement, and they’re dropping further after the ‘Cash for Cameron’ scandal. High-profile Tory pundit Tim Montgomerie fired a broadside at the party leadership, and Tory ‘detoxification’ guru and Cabinet Secretary Francis Maude made a fool of himself in front of parliament and then the public. The most recent developments could yet make things marginally worse for them (although if they can turn the tanker drivers' strike against Labour it could work in their favour), but everybody seems to be forgetting the bigger picture.
The coalition can U-turn all they like on taxes, squirm and repent all they like on donations, and Ed Miliband can sing the praises of Greggs ‘til he’s red in the face, but as long as the public and the media keep schtum about the cuts, Osborne will sleep soundly at night. Calmly and resolutely dismantling Britain’s publicly-owned services is his calling. Not only does he cling to his faith in the oxymoronic economic theology of ‘expansionary fiscal contraction’ (the discredited belief that spending cuts lead to growth), but he also hopes to combine a near-irreversible shrinking of the public sector with the widespread encroachment of the private sector into the gaps left behind by his slash-and-burn crusade. This private sector will be free from the moral checks and balances of what he condemns as ‘red tape’ – the regulations that, for example, stop corporations from discriminating against minorities, destroying the environment or firing employees without reason or notice. Essentially, he hopes for the brutal and uncontrolled private sector colonisation of a disheartened and defenceless public sector.
It is old-fashioned Thatcherite economics, where the pure, unthinking competition of an unregulated private sector weeds out the unworthy and rewards the capable. It is the abhorrent and archaic philosophy of Social Darwinism writ large across the economy and, by extension, society itself.
Equally oxymoronic is Osborne’s embrace of ‘dynamic scoring’ – the (also discredited) belief that tax cuts ‘pay for themselves’ because they stimulate the economy. When George W Bush pioneered this in the USA, his tax cuts left a hole in the budget that was never filled. Jonny Medland in The Guardian writes that Osborne is using this flawed logic to justify the tax cuts that he hopes will help win the Conservatives a majority in 2015.
When we focus all our attention on pasties, petrol and Peter Cruddas, we lose sight of the real scandal at the heart of government – that the Chancellor of the Exchequer is visiting unprecedented destruction on the services of people who need them; he is impeding economic recovery and leading us back into recession; he is cutting taxes to make whatever is left even harder to pay for; and he is doing it under the auspices of nothing more than a corrupt and immoral ideology.
Is there a way out? Not with this government, it seems. The Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives, regardless of policy differences on the NHS, taxation and whatever else becomes part of ‘differentiation’, will remain united on the timeline of the cuts agenda. By 2015, Osborne’s axe will have hacked through vast swathes of the services many people rely on. Waiting until the next election to reject this government won’t help those people; that’s why action is needed now.
The petrol tanker drivers’ strike could herald the start of a prolonged period of collective action against Coalition Britain – if Cameron, Osborne and Clegg can be convinced that they face electoral catastrophe in 2015, they might just ease off. There are myriad campaigning organisations willing to take the fight to Westminster, but without a wave of pressure from ordinary voters, their voices carry little weight. Liberal Democrats need to speak out against the cuts above all else, and any remaining One Nation Conservatives must do the same. Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland can all offer alternatives, and it is from those Nations that the sparks of radicalism have blown south before.
What is certain is that stopping or restraining the cuts is impossible without massive cooperative engagement, and those who need to be engaged are being needlessly distracted by a media obsessed with the inconsequential banalities of relatively small-scale government incompetency.
Maybe the Karma Police have been at work. The events that are supposed to have ‘rocked’ the Coalition over recent weeks could be the doings of some greater force, a warning shot against the continued realisation of Osborne’s ambitions. I think not: the government is driving us down that dark road in that sinister video, one with no apparent routes of escape – no alternatives, as the Chancellor likes to remind us. Eventually, people will tire of it. So far, we have only seen a fraction of the cuts, and the vast majority are still to come. There may come a time when the British electorate, exhausted and appalled, will turn round to look Coalition Britain in the eye and quote Thom Yorke’s ominous chorus – ‘This is what you get, when you mess with us’. Let’s hope we’ve got a packet of matches in our pocket.
The video to Radiohead’s Karma Police shows a car pursuing an exhausted man down a dark road. At the end of the video, as Thom Yorke sings ‘For a minute there, I lost myself, I lost myself’, the beleaguered escapee sees a line of petrol leaking from the car as it reverses away from him, presumably preparing to finish him off. He fumbles in his pocket, and produces a packet of matches. He puts his hands behind his back in apparent resignation, before dropping a lit match onto the trail of petrol. The flames run towards the car, which reverses frantically before being engulfed by flames.
In Coalition Britain, the predator and prey of this sinister pursuit would look at the shining example of two ideologically incompatible political parties putting their differences aside for the good of the nation and think ‘we’re all in this together’ – the poor man on the road could get a lift home, picking up some cold sausage rolls for the wife, kids and overtaxed granny on the way.
For a minute there, I lost myself. Coalition Britain is, of course, a sham. Osborne’s much-maligned handling of the budget was in part the fault of some nifty leaking by his long-suffering coalition partners, bringing issues to the fore that would otherwise have been buried, à la Brown, under whatever ‘good news’ the Chancellor was able to offer. This is all part of the Liberal Democrats' ‘differentiation’ agenda, a too-little too-late response to public disgust at their willingness to trade principles for power.
The only things left holding the government together are the chains of political expediency – an election now would reduce the Lib Dems to a handful of MPs, and the Tories would have to dilute their gleeful slashing of public services with some populist policies in search of a Conservative majority that remains highly unlikely.
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| Mmmm, taxes. Courtesy of Analiem |
For a minute there, we all lost ourselves. As queues grow at petrol stations (although, I’d like to note, the one outside my window is having a quieter day than usual) and politicians extol the virtues of hot pastry products to an eager media, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development is quietly and calmly announcing that we’re heading back into recession. And nobody seems to care.
For the last couple of weeks, it was almost possible to believe that the Tories had reasons to be worried. Polling numbers took a hit after the budget announcement, and they’re dropping further after the ‘Cash for Cameron’ scandal. High-profile Tory pundit Tim Montgomerie fired a broadside at the party leadership, and Tory ‘detoxification’ guru and Cabinet Secretary Francis Maude made a fool of himself in front of parliament and then the public. The most recent developments could yet make things marginally worse for them (although if they can turn the tanker drivers' strike against Labour it could work in their favour), but everybody seems to be forgetting the bigger picture.
The coalition can U-turn all they like on taxes, squirm and repent all they like on donations, and Ed Miliband can sing the praises of Greggs ‘til he’s red in the face, but as long as the public and the media keep schtum about the cuts, Osborne will sleep soundly at night. Calmly and resolutely dismantling Britain’s publicly-owned services is his calling. Not only does he cling to his faith in the oxymoronic economic theology of ‘expansionary fiscal contraction’ (the discredited belief that spending cuts lead to growth), but he also hopes to combine a near-irreversible shrinking of the public sector with the widespread encroachment of the private sector into the gaps left behind by his slash-and-burn crusade. This private sector will be free from the moral checks and balances of what he condemns as ‘red tape’ – the regulations that, for example, stop corporations from discriminating against minorities, destroying the environment or firing employees without reason or notice. Essentially, he hopes for the brutal and uncontrolled private sector colonisation of a disheartened and defenceless public sector.
It is old-fashioned Thatcherite economics, where the pure, unthinking competition of an unregulated private sector weeds out the unworthy and rewards the capable. It is the abhorrent and archaic philosophy of Social Darwinism writ large across the economy and, by extension, society itself.
Equally oxymoronic is Osborne’s embrace of ‘dynamic scoring’ – the (also discredited) belief that tax cuts ‘pay for themselves’ because they stimulate the economy. When George W Bush pioneered this in the USA, his tax cuts left a hole in the budget that was never filled. Jonny Medland in The Guardian writes that Osborne is using this flawed logic to justify the tax cuts that he hopes will help win the Conservatives a majority in 2015.
When we focus all our attention on pasties, petrol and Peter Cruddas, we lose sight of the real scandal at the heart of government – that the Chancellor of the Exchequer is visiting unprecedented destruction on the services of people who need them; he is impeding economic recovery and leading us back into recession; he is cutting taxes to make whatever is left even harder to pay for; and he is doing it under the auspices of nothing more than a corrupt and immoral ideology.
Is there a way out? Not with this government, it seems. The Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives, regardless of policy differences on the NHS, taxation and whatever else becomes part of ‘differentiation’, will remain united on the timeline of the cuts agenda. By 2015, Osborne’s axe will have hacked through vast swathes of the services many people rely on. Waiting until the next election to reject this government won’t help those people; that’s why action is needed now.
The petrol tanker drivers’ strike could herald the start of a prolonged period of collective action against Coalition Britain – if Cameron, Osborne and Clegg can be convinced that they face electoral catastrophe in 2015, they might just ease off. There are myriad campaigning organisations willing to take the fight to Westminster, but without a wave of pressure from ordinary voters, their voices carry little weight. Liberal Democrats need to speak out against the cuts above all else, and any remaining One Nation Conservatives must do the same. Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland can all offer alternatives, and it is from those Nations that the sparks of radicalism have blown south before.
What is certain is that stopping or restraining the cuts is impossible without massive cooperative engagement, and those who need to be engaged are being needlessly distracted by a media obsessed with the inconsequential banalities of relatively small-scale government incompetency.
Maybe the Karma Police have been at work. The events that are supposed to have ‘rocked’ the Coalition over recent weeks could be the doings of some greater force, a warning shot against the continued realisation of Osborne’s ambitions. I think not: the government is driving us down that dark road in that sinister video, one with no apparent routes of escape – no alternatives, as the Chancellor likes to remind us. Eventually, people will tire of it. So far, we have only seen a fraction of the cuts, and the vast majority are still to come. There may come a time when the British electorate, exhausted and appalled, will turn round to look Coalition Britain in the eye and quote Thom Yorke’s ominous chorus – ‘This is what you get, when you mess with us’. Let’s hope we’ve got a packet of matches in our pocket.
