It’s A God-Awful Small Affair
Yesterday I watched a Budget for the first time since the early stages of The Plague, when it seemed like we had Budgets every three weeks or so. Good times; happy days, eh?1
The dreary, depressing spectacle reminded me why I haven’t really bothered watching events in the Commons for a long time now – pantomimic; boorish; party political masturbation; saying nothing to me about my life.
And has there ever been a person to hold two of the Great Offices of
State (sic) less comfortable in his own skin than the
multi-millionaire Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt? Like his former
Cabinet colleague Nicky Morgan Baroness Morgan of Cotes, Hunt
wears a look of permanent surprise, almost like even he can’t quite
believe such palpable lack of talent has carried him so far. Look up
“awks” in a dictionary and you’ll see Hunt’s official portrait in place
of a definition.
Most of all — worst of all — was the sheer paucity of political imagination and ambition on display. And it’s not as if there’s no need for a bit of ambition in UK PLC in 2024.
In almost 80 minutes of droning, the climate crisis didn’t get a single mention. Hunt had the audacity to mention that one of his poor kids was being made to watch this shitshow from the Commons’ public gallery yet couldn’t even be arsed to acknowledge that his kids — and their kids — might well not have a planet to live on in the very near future. But why should he, when His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition has just junked its own half-hearted proposal to at least try to do something about the rapidly approaching calamity?
If you took Hunt’s speech at face value, you’d never know that the NHS has been in perpetual crisis for more than a decade. Record waits for operations and appointments and in A&E, countless thousands’ staff too few, buildings falling apart. But no mention of any money or any measures to address these problems.
The same for education. The same for local government. The same for the wretched state of our justice system. Social care? Pull the other one.
And — of course — no acknowledgement whatsoever, from either side, of the Brexit-shaped elephant in the chamber and the catastrophic toll the way it has been implemented has taken on the nation’s economy.
Just another “Budget for long-term growth” in a country whose economy hasn’t properly grown for almost a generation. Remember Japan’s lost decade? We plucky Brits have beaten the crap out of that.
But — BUT! — another 2p off National Insurance!!! Obviously, that means another several billion pounds less to spend on public services but, you know, swings and roundabouts, voters. Swings and roundabouts.
It’s as if Clement Attlee surveyed the nation in 1945 and said, “Fuck it. No point filling in all these bomb craters or replacing these flattened buildings. We’ll muddle by and have a singsong down the pub. But we’ll nip a penny off income tax if you vote for us.”
As if Aneurin Bevan thought about establishing a national health service but then decided, “Nah. That’ll involve work, money, time and effort. Let’s just give everyone a bit of willow bark to fashion their own aspirin and have done with it.”
As if Ellen Wilkinson and George Tomlinson decided it wasn’t really all that important if our kids couldn’t read, write or add up and gave up on universal education because it would just cost too darn much.
The Conservative Party has not had a single original thought since the late 1970s. Everything it has done has revolved around reducing the size of the state, lowering direct taxes (while increasing tax revenues through other means), privatisation and outsourcing/offshoring.
The Labour Party, meanwhile, has evolved into the Conservative Party with a slightly different logo. Within minutes yesterday, Tubby Keith and that woman with helmet hair had embraced the National Insurance cut like a long, lost child. The Labour manifesto for the forthcoming General Election will be so ambitionless it will be written on a postage stamp. One of the bigger postage stamps, I grant you, but a postage stamp, nevertheless.2
It’s like the entire population of the Palaces of Westminster has dosed up on medication that inhibits dreams, ambition, and a basic grasp on reality.
And so this is where the Minister finds himself in early 2024: despairing at the inability of yet another generation of British politicians to acknowledge either that 45 years of neoliberal doctrine has failed absolutely or that there may be another, better way to do things.
I didn’t vote in 1997 because I was living abroad at the time and it was all a bit of a faff. But I’ve voted in every other election – national, European and local — since I turned 18 in 1989. 2024 may well bring that run to a shuddering halt.
Because if they can’t be arsed, why should we?
232,112 deaths in the UK and counting. Well played, lads. Nice one.↩︎
At least they’ll issue one. The Tory manifesto will probably just amount to a text message reading, “PUT US OUT OF OUR MISERY, WE BEG YOU.”↩︎