It would be easy for those who have criticised George Osborne to gloat this Christmas.
His housing bubble is already bursting.
Growth has been downgraded to 2.6%.
Borrowing is going to well over £90 billion this year when he assured us it should be heading for our collective memories right now.
The balance of payments is heading to be a basis for a sterling re-evaluation.
GDP per head remains below 2008 levels.
Many people are still suffering declining real incomes and any upward adjustment is no compensation for long years of downward spiral.
Business investment is down.
The list of missed targets, broken promises and failed rhetorical claim is seemingly enough to make anyone who has said that all Osborne has done has been predestined, based as it was on obviously flawed dogma, wish to gloat in the pleasure of saying 'told you so' but I have to say that would be inappropriate.
It's inappropriate because the flawed dogma of austerity and of cuts that is based on the presumption that management of the state is equivalent to maintaining the finances of a corner shop and the household that lives above the premises prevails across too much of the political spectrum. And as yet no alternative narrative has captured popular imagination that remains gripped by a fear of debt without comprehending its reality in the case of a sovereign state with its own currency.
And it would be folly to be smug when Osborne's failure has been at cost to real people who have paid a heavy price for his malicious contempt for their needs.
In that case what should we feel at Christmas?
Anger is the first thing: anger that so much harm has been done by so few to so many, wholly unnecessarily.
Frustration is next: frustration is next, including that with the exception of our three women party leaders (Nicola Sturgeon, Natalie Bennett and Leanne Wood) there is no political back bone to fight austerity as yet.
Indignation would not go amiss: indignation that the media, including the BBC, seems dedicated to promoting Osborne's failed narrative.
And hope: hope that in 2015 we can change this.
I think that hope appropriate. Christmas is a time of rebirth, of new hope, and of energy to start again being released as a result of the rest we take.
We need hope. We need that energy. And we definitely need the change that rebirth represents.
So it isn't time to gloat, because that would endorse the suffering that's happened.
But it is time to hope we can end it in 2015.
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Yes indeed.
Well put, Richard. Anger, frustration and indignation are indeed the cardinal feelings here.
The intellectual poverty of the BBC is now ringing its death knell as many of us turn to RT and Al Jazeera for anything approaching an alternative narrative.
Unfortunately, I suspect the lead up to the election, will be a dire display of cliches, illiteracy and myth propagation with the best that can be hoped for being a hung Parliament with bargaining power from the SNP. Greens are now matching the Lib Dems but because of our less than adequate voting system this will not be reflected in seats.
I agree wholeheartedly Richard. I’m a firm believer that some good comes out of even the worst experiences and my goodness austerity has been and is one of those experiences for so, so many people who had nothing to do with its cause. Perhaps the time has come to spell out what the few masters of finance, selfish ideology and greed have done and continue to do to the many in simplistic terms that resonate with the majority of the electorate.
Unfortunately,any contribution I can make must now wait until the end of January!
A few tax returns still to do?
Good luck
According to the Daily Telegraph Osborne’s handling of the economy is the Tory Party’s greatest asset. I can well believe it.
No matter what goes wrong, neither Ed Balls nor Chuka Umunna seems to want to talk about it!
I genuinely don’t understand what has happened with the Labour Party. No matter what the results, all they can say is “well, we’ll follow what George does, but a bit more fairly”.
Far from being a good chancellor he’s been an execrably poor chancellor, but you’d never guess it from labour. He probably gets more acute criticism from Nick Clegg & Ken Clarke than from the whole shadow cabinet combined. What are they playing at? Poor old Ed looks, not unreasonably, stupefied by the utter uselessness of his financial colleagues.
I’m reluctant to champion ‘growth’ because the only way we can keep GDP spinning upwards is by, essentially, selling the next generation’s environment for our selfish prosperity. So, in some senses, lower GDP is a good thing.
Fact remains that by the standard economic rules the UK & Europe’s monetarist approach has been found wanting compared to the US’s Keynesian approach which is now yielding a remarkable 5%+. Sad fact is Obama was criticised so much for his economic policies, now they’ve been proved right no-one is interested. Everyone in the US is more exercised about whether their police should, essentially, get hunting rights on young, male, blacks.