Sometimes I startle even myself with the vehemence of my loathing for this Government. Of course, it’s part of my job as a satirist to hate all governments, but – and I admit this with some amazement – I’m aware that I hate this one more than any other government I’ve experienced in almost 52 years, more even than Tony Blair’s or Margret Thatcher’s at their very worst.
To be sure, its loathsomeness is probably its most recognisable feature, but in order to get the adrenalin flowing and clear out the arteries, let’s start listing its manifold vilenesses. And we should probably start at the top.
The Prime Minister’s shiny face and the way he’s always turning on what he must imagine is charm are ghastly enough, as is his public relations man’s facility for calculating that everyone will be beguiled into believing whatever he says, merely as a result of him saying it and irrespective of whether it’s true or not.
But far worse than that – which is mostly just a clumsy imitation of Blairism – is David Cameron’s laziness. This, in part, arises from his insufferably complacent sense of entitlement: as he was clearly born to be Prime Minister, all he has hereafter to do is be it, rather than do anything else. That’s why, during a period when the weather left thousands of his fellow citizens stranded at airports or on motorways, rather than seeing nice publicity shots of the Prime Minister posing with a snow shovel at Gatwick Airport, or even expressing some sympathy, we heard nothing. In fact, Cameron was mute for what seemed like a month, only breaking his statesmanlike Trappism to congratulate
the England Cricket Team on retaining
the Ashes. At least we can comfort ourselves that even emperors are ultimately cheap enough to jump on any passing bandwagon.
And while it’s hard to think how exactly Cameron is earning his much-vaunted “take-home” pay (ignoring all the dosh he already has at home), it’s also not entirely easy to see what George Osborne does to justify the handsome wedge he’s paid from the public purse to supplement his trust fund. After all, one of the first things he did as Chancellor was to say his economic policy was now based entirely on trying to second guess the whims and caprices of the dealers in the bond markets.
One wonders, therefore, why he doesn’t just shut up shop and leave it to them, as it seems the nation state is such a feeble edifice that it’s safer more or less to close it down rather than possibly enrage some coked-up creeps in red braces taking bets on human immiseration. Unless, that is, he’s been lying, and he’s inspired less by terror than unswerving dogmatism and a desire further to enrich his rich friends and heroes. Either way, add that to his enormously unlikable face and it’s not hard to see him, uniquely among modern Chancellors of the Exchequer, standing shoulder to shoulder with his illustrious predecessor, Sir Francis Dashwood, and officiating at a meeting of the Hellfire Club.
(Please, at this point, anyone who’s finding this too much, the toilets are on the way out, just beyond the half-dug Thatcher memorial pit. You’ll probably find Michael Gove wedged in the U-bend.)
Which brings us, hideously but inevitably, to Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats. To their eternal credit, my children, both students at the time, scorned the blandishments of their friends and contemporaries and refused to consider voting for the Lib Dems for an instant. This was just as well, as both Clegg and former national treasure Vince Cable have both confirmed what everyone always guessed at anyway: that a vote
for the Lib Dems is a wasted vote and now
it’s official.
As you may have noticed in several media interviews – unless, like me, you can’t bear to listen to kittens drowning themselves – the line being used to justify serial betrayal goes something like this. As the Lib Dems didn’t win the election, they cannot therefore be expected to seek to implement the promises on which their MPs were individually elected. Even though a version of the Liberal Party is in Government and therefore in a position to make a fist of sticking to its principles in an infinitely more palpable way than at any time since before universal adult suffrage, it seems that what one claims to believe in is the first casualty of pragmatism and compromise.
And once you’ve established out loud that what you promise in an election has no bearing on what you do afterwards, it follows that no one can ever sensibly vote Lib Dem again, apart from the adventurous minority who relish the previously untested “surprise surprise lucky dip” school of government. Oh, and I forgot to mention the bit about how Clegg first lied to schoolchildren to win their votes, and then had them cavalry charged outside the Houses of Parliament in order to disguise his shame.
I’ve hardly scratched the surface of the coalition’s repulsiveness, and without doubt I’ll return to this subject again and again. But vilest of all, in the same way that tsarism or the ancien regime or the Soviet Union in its senility were vile, is the Government’s blank and probably willful refusal to recognise that it’s buttressing an economic and political system no longer fit for purpose in a modern democracy. More on this next month, if you or I can stand it. l
