Opportunity, fairness and equality. This was the core ethos when New Labour came to power in 1997.
Blair promised that everyone in Britain will be given a fair chance to succeed and Brown promised to eliminate the ‘boom and bust’ culture. But a surge of wealth and opportunism had to come at a price.
Fast forward 12 years and we’re deep into a recession, a culture of overspending and over borrowing has left the country in economic hangover and the people in charge seem oblivious to it all. We’re experiencing the bust morning after the boom night before.
Forecasts have even been made, predicting it’ll be the year 2032 until the debt levels return to a sustainable level. It’s probably because the phrase “green shoots of recovery” is tossed around so casually that when signs of them actually do appear; we tend to play it down as more hot air from politicians. Instead, given the severity of the recession, the public want to see an economic orchard emerging before they believe the worst is over.
Admittedly, Gordon Brown is a far less media savvy Prime Minister than his predecessor at number 10 and neither is he videogenic in comparison to Blair. It tends to be the armchair political commentators who feel the need most to vent spleen at the Brown believing he single-handedly caused this economic downturn.
George Osborne didn’t even manage to take a break from his routine tongue lashing of Labour to actually try and present a substantial alternative to Darling’s list of proposals in his budget response. The message was focused on what The Tories would have done to avoid the recession and what errors the Government have made in trying to bring about economic recovery.
It seems as if the opposition are trying to milk votes without presenting an alternative to this mess. If either of the two major opposition parties had an actual plan then why didn’t they create some kind of mock-budget to show how they would provide an alternative solution.
When a nation becomes disenchanted with their government, the tendency is to assume that the grass is always greener on the other side. Perhaps we’re supposed to take that literally now that The Conservatives have ‘reinvented’ themselves with an eco-friendly image. Such tactics have included; the new Conservative party logo of a scribbled tree and David Cameron’s laughably contrived bike rides to work…whilst having his shoes and brief case chauffer driven behind him ! Yet Cameron felt compelled to berate The Chancellor’s car scrap scheme for its miniscule carbon footprint!
However, it was Liberal Democrat’s Treasury Spokesman Vince Cable gave the most sober interpretation of the budget. He asked voters not to dwell on the past and even told politicians to “Stop the childish bickering over whose to blame.”
Quite a bold, yet humbling statement from Cable, given he was the one who’d been constantly warning The Government about a potential recession years beforehand. He could have quite easily spent 5 minutes preaching “I told you so”.
Instead he outlined a realistic road to recovery. Cable mentioned that the government could spread the burden of tax more fairly rather than taxing low and average earners. He also fingered out the legal tax dodgers living in tax havens saying: “British tax payers pay through the nose while the Union Jack flies above many of the world’s tax havens.”
It’s just a shame that Britain’s archaic first past the post voting systems means that the Lib Dems never get fairly represented in parliament to help mitigate the bi-partisan bickering between Labour and The Tories. The often forgotten third party had received 25% of the total votes in the 2005 general election but received 10% of parliamentary representation. Meanwhile in the same election, Labour received 35% of the total votes but managed to hold onto 55% of the overall seats.
When the last Conservative government began to look tired in the mid-nineties, the media took it’s usual pot-shot but it was ultimately Blair’s vision, leadership and PR skills in a new age of rolling news which helped him formulate a strong manifesto to appease voters from both the left and right. Now that The Daily Mail, The Express and Telegraph have their tongues firmly sewn into Cameron’s trousers and The Sun flirting with the idea more and more, support is being rallied behind an visionless alternative with no solid policies.
David Cameron just tells the public that if The Conservatives got in power, the road to recovery would be long and hard… just as Labour as tells us. It’s not unsurprising of him to lack answers when he is inept at asking questions. Every Wednesday he phrases the questions in exactly the same way at PMQs, always beginning.
“Will the Prime minister admit…” or if he’s feeling adventurous: “Will the Prime minister confirm…”
This is his standardised set-up of closed-down questions in an effort to expose Brown’s stubbornness by not answering questions in a straight manner on Labour’s failures. Shame that Cameron doesn’t practice what he preaches whenever he’s asked by journalists… Will Mr. Cameron admit that he has taken cocaine?
When Cameron won the leadership contest in 2005 he promised an end to ‘Punch and Judy’ politics. Even at the time, most took this statement with a pinch of salt and The Tories reaction to the budget has augmented the taste of the sodium based condiment (at least in my mouth) even more.
Brown has in fact eliminated the textbook recessions of the past which always came with high inflation and high interest rates. It’s quite obvious that The Conservatives are taking the ‘kick ‘em while they’re down’ approach rather instead of outlining a clear vision of the road to recovery, as this would include taxing the wealthy and invariably upsetting their own core voters!
By Nick Townsend
