Tory cuts leave Britons seething

Slash-and-burn instincts to the fore.

June 30, 2010 12:05 am | Updated 12:06 am IST

Nothing riles the so-called Tory “modernisers “ — that is, Prime Minister David Cameron and his Notting Hill set — more than the taunt that behind the shining new mask they are the “same old Tories.” But the more they protest the more their actions suggest that they are protesting too much. It is barely six weeks since they came to power and, already, their old Tory instincts are on the rampage?

The swingeing Thatcher-style cuts to public spending proposed in their first interim budget (the biggest package of cuts and taxes in a generation) was pure old Tory stuff reflecting their deep-seated ideological aversion to the welfare state.

The £60-billion cuts which, according to independent experts, will hit the poorest the hardest and could tip the economy back into recession came wrapped up in the flimsiest of fig leaves — namely the claim that they were “unavoidable'' in order to bring down the “crippling” budget deficit which, if allowed to balloon, would wreck the economy.

Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz rubbished the claim pointing out that, on the contrary, nothing could be worse than cutting back on spending just when the economy is starting to recover. The reasons for the cutbacks, he suggested, were purely ideological.

Indeed, the Tories fought the election campaign on an anti-state platform vowing to dismantle it by handing over more and more functions to the private and voluntary sectors in the name of promoting individual enterprise or what they grandly called the Big Society to replace the Big State created by their Labour predecessors. And they got down to it within days of moving into Downing Street.

The Liberal Democrats, their junior partners in the ruling coalition, are clearly embarrassed at having to back the Tory agenda that they had so fiercely opposed during the election campaign. Not surprisingly they are being accused of ``selling out'' to the Tories in exchange for a few plum jobs in the cabinet and deputy prime ministership for their leader Nick Clegg.

Many Lib Dems are seething with anger and the party is said to be losing support on the ground with some 48 per cent of those who voted for it at the last election saying they may not vote for it again. Nor are its Tory partners being exactly helpful. Apparently, Lib Dems have become a favourite target of jokes in Tory circles with some openly (and gleefully) saying how the Lib Dems are being used to give legitimacy to a Thatcherite agenda. One senior Tory is reported as saying that they are “like prisoners of war being made to read out our agenda.”

But forget Lib Dems and their unease over Tory policies. There are fears of a public backlash as the deep spending cuts start to bite. A summer of discontent is said to be looming with trade unions flexing their muscles over threatened job losses and wage freeze reviving memories of the mayhem caused by Margaret Thatcher's slash-and-burn policies in 1980s. What we are seeing is a replay of the same old Tory tactics under a new — and more slick — management.

Similarities don't end here. For, it seems, Mr. Cameron's Tories are as blasé about the impact of their policies as were their Thatcher predecessors. In 1981 (sorry to keep harping on the 1980s but that was the period of Tory high noon), as unemployment rose Norman Tebbit , the Tory grandee who became famous for prescribing the cricket loyalty test for Asian migrants, memorably advised the unemployed to stop being lazy and to “get on your bike” to look for work.

Thirty years on, another senior Tory has the same advice for millions of people facing unemployment: get a move on, stupid. If there are no jobs in your area, get out and try and find work somewhere else even if it means moving hundreds of miles away.

The Work and Pensions Secretary Ian Duncan Smtih, who represents the same constituency that Mr. Tebbit once did, says that people should not sit around and moan if they don't find jobs locally. Instead, they should be willing to uproot their families and move to areas where they might find jobs. Or as Mr Tebbit barked: “Get on your bike mate.”

The same old Tories? No?

And, here's another echo from the Thatcherite 1980s. Remember Enoch Powell, another claw-and-tooth Tory with a visceral dislike of immigrants? He warned that if the influx of foreigners was not checked it could cause “rivers of blood” to flow across Britain.

Well, his ghost is still stalking the Tory HQ judging from the party's continuing obsession with immigration. Clamping down on immigration was the Tories' headline campaign plank and, despite resistance from Lib Dems, one of Mr. Cameron's first acts has been to make good on that promise by announcing an annual cap on the number of people coming into Britain from outside the European Union.

Indeed, the Tories were in such a hurry to push it through that they have effectively brought forward the original time-line according to which a cap would have come into force only next April. Instead, they have gone ahead and imposed a temporary cap that would care of the nine-months until then. The argument is that it is intended to prevent a last-minute rush ahead of the April deadline but, in truth, it is the Enoch Powell strain of Toryism in operation.

Ah, the same old Tories.

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