Dear Dave,
Well done re the election. Shame you didn’t win it, but at least you’re in Downing Street, and that mad Scotsman isn’t.
Shame about all the LibDems in government – especially that utter blister at Energy, who’s going to squeeze billions out of our basket-case economy to mitigate the effects of something that isn’t actually a problem, and that dreary old sourpuss at Business, whose main qualification for the job appears to be that he hates bankers.
Shame, too, about punishing people who invested in shares and second homes by raising the rate at which Capital Gains Tax is levied. Your party used to boast about rewarding those who husband their resources and plan for their retirement, but I guess that doesn’t go down well with the resentful, sandal-wearing levellers who’re keeping you in power.
Ditching ID cards is, of course, welcome. As is cancelling Heathrow’s third runway. Ta. Crossrail next, please.
But while Osbourne and Laws set about dreaming up a budget which we all know will be quite unpleasant (even though £6Bn of extra cuts seems pathetic, given the circumstances) can I give you a wish-list which, I fondly believe, reflects the desires of well over half the population?
Rod Liddle, writing in this week’s Spectator, is very funny about all the things that won’t change under this government: immigration figures, the unwillingness of the criminal justice system to protect the innocent, the ability of teachers to expel disruptive pupils, the number of lying scrimshankers on invalidity benefit etc.
Obviously, he’s right: these things won’t change one iota, no matter what the government says or does.
But I wonder why.
One of the curious things about the Thatcher era was the way that Gramscian Marxists in the public sector kept control of the agendas for education, health, law and order, broadcasting, the arts, welfare, immigration and European integration.
The press used to have fun with Mrs. T’s tendency to sound as if she was still in opposition, even after ten years in power, but, in a very real sense, she was. Because, culturally, the Tories have been out of office for at least 50 years. When it comes to areas other than the economy, trade and defence, it really hasn’t mattered who occupies Downing Street, or which politician is in charge of which department – the Long March to the left by those lucky enough to be funded by the British taxpayer has carried on unabated.
On paper, the main reason we now have a “Liberal Conservative” (i.e. Butskellite) government should be the economy, stupid. But you’d be stupid to think it. As those now bidding for the Labour leadership – a supply teacher, Gromit, and (soon) the charmless, bulgy-eyed psychopath who was Renfield to Gordon Brown’s Dracula – keep telling us, the real concerns “on the doorstep” were out-of-control immigration and the absurdly unfair welfare system, which tend to hit lower middle class and working class voters hardest, as does crime.
“Fairness” was a ubiquitous buzzword before and after the election – everyone was at it. You, Dave, used “responsibility” a lot as well, and that’s not surprising, because they go together.
Leaving aside the economy (if only we could), at the end of your five-year government, most of us will judge your success on how you’ve performed in the key areas that matter to voters.
Crime should have plummeted – especially violent crimes against the person. We don’t really care how you manage this: directly elected police chiefs; racial profiling; cutting police paperwork; monstering magistrates and judges who hand out pathetic sentences (or none at all) or let violent little bastards out on parole to carry on terrorizing the law-abiding; allowing household to do whatever the hell they like to criminals on their property; allowing grown-ups to punch in the face any spotty-faced jerk behaving anti-socially; naming and shaming police whose indolence and gormlessness allows yobs to hound vulnerable citizens to their death – or just make their lives miserable; bringing back a spell in the stocks; corporal punishment; or hanging. Today a judge allowed the “alleged” ringleader of an Al Qaeda terrorist plot aimed at targets in the North-West to stay in the UK because he might be tortured in Pakistan. Would it surprise you to know that there is nothing on this earth that we care less about than what happens to this speck of human ordure? Had enough, Dave: we’ve really, really, genuinely had bloody well enough. Get a grip, man!
Immigration: how stupid, how ludicrous, how utterly and completely suicidally deranged the last 13 years have been. We want you to throw out illegal immigrants – all of them, wherever they come from, now. Introduce a cap by all means, but make it tiny, and make sure those you let in actually like this country, respect our customs and institutions, and will be of net benefit to the rest of us. No poor or unskilled immigrant should be allowed to settle in Britain – our welfare, criminal justice and education systems have guaranteed an almost limitless supply of useless, expensive wasters without our having to import any more.
Welfare: oh, for God’s sake! Why do the rest of us have to subsidize anybody who doesn’t have truly serious and provable mental or physical problems? Why, Dave? Why do the rest of us have to subsidize half-witted slags and knuckle-dragging sperm donors who produce children they have no intention of providing for? Sort it out, sonny!
Education: oh Lord. I pay for my son’s education, which means that someone else is having their child educated by the state at my expense – no, don’t all rush to thank me: I’m sure you’re frightfully grateful. Given that I’m being so extraordinarily generous, I’d like to know that my hard-earned money is helping turn out a numerate, literate, employable young person who will be a credit to their family, their school and their country. Instead – oh, well, we all know the reality: the slack-jawed, ignorant, anti-social calibans churrned out by the state education system can be observed on every high street or shopping centre or youth court in the land. A magistrate this week called two 16-year louts who had desecrated prayer books and a cross at Blackburn Cathedral “absolute scum”. He has been suspended for his remarks. Dave, JFDI!
During the last 50 years, the concepts of shame and responsibility have gradually been tippexed out of the Public Servants’ Thesaurus by the malevolently compassionate denizens of the left to be replaced by the concepts of rights and victimhood. Respect is accorded to everyone who doesn’t deserve it, and to very few of those who do.
Britain needs fairness and responsibility, and all that great-sounding stuff, Dave. You don’t need to keep telling us. We get it.
Just make it happen! Or we’ll know for sure that you are - catastrophically - the true heir to Blair.
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