Downturn

12 May 2010

Downturn? That's a sneaky one. After desperately squishing various words into allowing me to rant about the election, it throws a genuinely political word at me. Nasty trick.

The Conservative-Liberal-Democrat Government that has been set up has a big job to do is avoiding a further downturn as it seeks to repay Gordon's bills. It would have been a perfect scenario for pure Tories, since despite the fact that we are mostly in massive debt because of the cost of recapitalising David Cameron's old chums in the banking sector, they have convinced many of the public that it's all because of government waste. For Tories, spending 5 years cheerfully wielding the axe would be like a pervert getting a job quality testing butt-plugs.

But I don't think it is going to be quite so much fun for the Whigs. At the moment they're crowing that the policy deals they have done with the Tories are (as one LibDem put it) a "centre-left agenda with occasional moments of right-wing madness"*. But the deal does not say where the axe will fall. For a party that believed that cutting spending too soon could lead us to a double-dip recession to engage in as yet undefined cost-cutting must be very alarming. If it all goes wrong their own membership won't forgive them, let alone the voters.

But what the hell. Some people say that we're heading for Greek style unrest. Since Greek style yoghurt is so nice I wonder if their unrest might not be pretty good too. Though I'd prefer strawberry. Possibly low fat macrobiotic, strawberry unrest, personally churned by Vince Cable whilst people throw marzipan sparrows at his head. It's the only way.

* "a bit like the last Government", as he put it.