Back To Basics
If I hear the phrase 'economic growth' again this week, I'll scream. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: how on earth do we grow the economy when the majority of the population are scraping the breadline; when people are working two and three jobs and still can't afford to pay their heating and food bills; the people in middle-class jobs on decent incomes who have to use food-banks to feed their families. If the vast majority of a country's populace are removed from the consumption side of the economic equation, how on earth is the economy expected to thrive?
But of course, the Tories have never been about growing the economy in any sense meaningful to Joe Public: their sphere of influence extends no further than the larger corporate world and the Square Mile: their idea of investment in the country is to encourage more plutocrats to engage with the rarefied and closed - to most of us - world of "high finance", a world in which the not inconsiderable profits generated by speculation and trading in the financial abstractions of the markets, are destined, not for the UK, but hived away in nests of offshore accounts, to be 'privately' plundered.
"A New Britain for a New Era", "Growth, Growth, Growth", slandering what she terms "The Anti-Growth Coalition", i.e. anyone but the Tory government, Truss' conference speech really did take me Back To The Future: the last-nail-in-the-coffin years of Thatcher's decade, which started within months with negative growth, and unemployment four times higher than when she took office. Deregulation and privatization served to plug the gap in government finances, with the crown jewels of energy, communications, and water - eventually to include the mail as well - sold off to fund their 'low-tax, high growth economy': a mantra that has resurfaced again under this current crop of conservative governments. Our stuff sold from under our feet: and Truss has the effrontery to talk of responsible and moral government, when she intends exactly the same despoil as her spiritual forebear.
And they still will not formulate or expound on their 'plans' to, as they see it, to turn the country around: from what, exactly? Let's see, now. Ah! The last twelve years of Tory government inaction and lack of planning on the economy, the NHS, social services, real investment in communities, tackling inequality, poverty and environmental catastrophe. And still they 'intend', 'plan' and 'foresee': the same empty platitudes and rhetoric that we've all had to suffer for the last decade-plus. When will the electorate, nay the Tory rank & file, wake up and see this venal bunch of crooks and chancers for what they truly are. I just hope that the rot fomenting within the party will find its way to the surface, and that the whole sorry edifice turns as to dust, so that we can finally inter this lot for good. Ashes to ashes...
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