Where Are We Now?

Wednesday 16th March

The election is almost a year behind us and the surprise victors are comfortable as they implement not only Manifesto pledges but long-held ideas they never thought they might be in a position to actually put into action.

  • The Economy. Well things may be on the turn; a few commentators have warned that things are about to get very nasty indeed.  Meanwhile despite only three months ago the Chancellor stating that things were going so well he had over 20 billion more than he thought he had, it looks as though he will struggle to achieve even his own modest deficit reduction plans this year – despite harsh cuts to the disabled and unemployed, his continued tax give-aways to the rich are making it harder than ever to balance the books.
  • This is the real crisis facing the country.  House prices continue to rise relentlessly as only those who already own property or private landlords can afford to buy, the very low interest rates helping them to fund their purchases.  And now even Housing Associations are being forced to sell their properties to sitting tenants.  Private rents are increasing far faster than inflation, forcing even more families to face a future of short-term lets and ever increasing insecurity and higher and higher rents with no prospect of ever owning their own home (a Thatcherite dream which has been scuppered by her own policy of council house sell-offs).
  • The NHS. Well, it limps on, more by the dedication of its beleaguered staff than any help from Central Government.  We have so far seen none of the extra 30 billion, was it, that Cameron promised during the election.  The Junior Doctor’s dispute rumbles on too, with neither side willing to compromise.  Maybe the idea is to force more and more Doctors to abandon the NHS anyway, so that it can be declared unworkable and we have to have a private system after all.
  • The Opposition. The SNP, which had a huge surge in popularity during the election campaign, have done very little in Westminster, concentrating on Scotland instead.  But this doesn’t appear to have dented their popularity north of the border at all.  The Lib-Dems have a new leader but the public hardly seem to have noticed.  Labour still appear in a bit of a muddle, with mutterings of discontent from many of the MPs making more headlines than what the Leadership might be saying.  Not that Jeremy and John McDonell are really saying very much anyway.  But the Labour party remains the only real opposition to a very rampant Tory party.  The much ridiculed Opinion polls are showing a slight narrowing of the gap but the Tories are still comfortably ahead.
  • The Tory party are tearing themselves apart over Europe, with the ensuing and still to be announced Tory leadership election as the sub-text.  The danger is that we could be sleep-walking into disaster.  With nothing positive to vote for the IN campaign risks a high level of apathy, whereas the OUT lot are quietly playing on people’s fears of even more immigrants arriving from Turkey and Syria and my suspicion is that those who want to leave will be more determined to vote than the ones who want to remain (witness UKIP doing very well at the last European Parliament elections).  We will see.

So we have four more years to run.  What sort of country we will find then I dread to think.  They say we get the sort of Government we deserve…I’m not sure of that.