I do wish the Government would stop trying to make our flesh crawl with all this panic around the deficit.
The angst they’re emitting is stirring no-one except the ratings agencies – and not in a good way. They need to calm down and think before emoting – unless the point of it all is not to deal with the problem so much as to rubbish their predecessors.
New Labour made the mistake of carrying the campaigning on into Government and the New Politics seem very like the old in this regard. Stop campaigning, start governing – and slow down. In other words, be more conservative, though that is perhaps too much to ask of this “progressive” coalition.
By the way, the next politician to claim to be “progressive” gets terminated with extreme prejudice. I am proud to be both reactionary and revolutionary as required but never progressive. The last straw was reading Nick Clegg claiming that unlike the cuts of the 1980s his Government’s cuts would be progressive. I’m reminded that stages in mental or physical decline are often described as progressive. And I add: Thatcher didn’t in fact cut. Under her aegis, pubic spending increased.
Personally I’d prefer reactionary cuts which don’t happen over progressive cuts which do. I end where I started. The deficit is serious but not as catastrophic or unmanageable as is being made out. More serious than the deficit is the double-dip recession which excessive austerity – like some self-fulfilling prophecy – will trigger. What really worries me as someone from Wales who works in regeneration is that that recession will have a geography to it – and it won’t be the parts of the UK in which the coalition are electorally strongest.