The talk across all newspapers is that Cameron has said there is no change to this austerity programme. As an indication of how lame this government is on growth there's this from the Guardian's preview of the Queen's Speech:
The enterprise bill will also usher in the Green Investment Bank, which will not have powers to borrow until 2015 at the earliest, and then only if public debt is much lower.
Nothing, but nothing matters more to this government than these things:
- Supporting banks, and most especially bankers;
- Giving their friends, mainly in banks, access to as many government backed secure revenue streams as they can to provide private benefit to a few at public expense to the many in the future (the NHS privatisation being the perfect example);
- Making it easier to sack people;
- Making it easier to use tax havens, whether as individuals through Switzerland or as companies through tax haven treasury companies, with in both cases the aim being that the rich can opt out of society.
This is the Tory and Lib Dem choice.
No wonder people rejected it in the hope of a Labour alternative last week.
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“Rose Garden 2” is simply more of the same failed policies. Do either Cameron or Clegg think that voters are really stupid enough not to see though the PR and spin? Presumably they must do.
Actually Howard, Cameron and Clegg are insulting the voters with this second love-in. Neither of them cares about the future of this country, after all they have another three years to destroy the social and economic fabric. We need to wait and see what happens in France after Hollande’s victory. Yesterday our media was so keen to highlight how he will fail because his message is one that the elites in this country do not want to take hold over here. How I wish I could have been in Paris after the election to see a man who does not have a rockstar image like Obama be elected. I hope the time has come for people to realise that a calm well educated man without spin can be elected. Of course he will make mistakes and his task is difficult but politicians must offer hope otherwise we may as well be governed by technocrats.
Hear hear Teresa!
I wasn’t in Paris, but watching on French TV came a close second.
As for the UK media … they could at least give the man a chance. But, as you say, for the most part they prefer to dismiss in advance any chance that he might succeed because basically they (or the elite who control them) don’t want that.
It’s always the same in the UK: “but he’ll increase debt – and we must never do that”
Even though everyone is
Here is the historian Ross McKibbin reviewing the second volume of John Campbell’s biography of Margaret Thatcher :
“When speaking of the state and its relation to society, Thatcherites use the word ‘freedom’, rarely ‘liberty’; and for them, freedom means freedom within a market politically constructed to favour some against others. They do not often use the word ‘liberty’ because it has different political connotations. Thatcher is a conservative and conservatives are not libertarians. The market for them has a disciplinary function, as does the state. Which of the two a government uses for a given disciplinary purpose depends on circumstances, but either will do…In one of the most striking sentences in the book — a sentence full of implications — Campbell writes that Thatcher had ‘no experience of business’. She knew nothing of the history of the British economy; nor did most of those who increasingly had her ear. She had no real idea of what made a successful capitalist economy. To the extent that she had an idea it was negative: that the role of a government was to eliminate its ideological enemies, trade unions, for example, or state controls. Once that was done, instant felicity. That a prudent government, which wanted a hardworking and provident people, might not have abolished exchange or credit controls is simply not an objection Thatcher understood intellectually — though she might have done so at some instinctive level.”
I like Ross McKibbin. And we are still in a Thatcherite state.
I found it puzzling that given such a spanking at the polls last week the Tories seem to think this is a signal from the electorate to be even more right-wing.
On reflection, this makes perfect sense to Tories. They don’t care about anyone who votes Labour and don’t even attempt to woo them. Instead they believe when they lose an election it is because ‘they didn’t get their vote out’. It is elitist and naive to think this way. It implies the country has a built-in right wing majority and that the 30+% who vote Labour aren’t worth worrying about. It fits well with Cameron’s view of the Tories as ‘the natural party of government’ and that they are ‘born to rule’. Their contempt for the poor, unemployed and low-paid is self-evident from the vindictive nature of their policies.
The Tories can go right if they wish, taking their bound-and-gagged FibDem hostages with them, but my only hope is they don’t do any more irreparable damage before we all get a chance to get shot of them.