Wow! they haven't actually instigated any cuts yet. What is it, 4 weeks to go for the Spending Review?
And already it is 'oh no, I apologize'...
I mean panic when panics due, but when no legislation has been tabled and the Budget for the cuts not actually even announced, isn't it a bit swift?
How is all this different from how New Labour would have performed; there's a deficit, right? If the deficit isn't dealt with the nations credit rating goes through the floor and before long we need IMF/Euro even intervention (like Greece, Spain, Eire etc).
So...address the deficit quickly before anything else goes wonky (such as the Chinese stop propping-up the US economy by buying Federal bonds). At the same time, if you take too much money out of the economy, such as child benefit, then folk stop buying things and you kill the recovery. Plus the next election is boll#;d.
So, what we've got to believe is that the Tories will go out-and-out to damage everyone except their fox-hunting mates...that all they want to do is shred the economy of any welfare benefits, just to pursue some mindless vindictive streak they've harbored. And, we also have to believe that the LibDems won't say a word about it, will just go along, whilst all the time an angelic Labour-government-in-waiting will be saying 'oh no, we never saw any need to reduce the deficit in the first place'.
In the X Files alternate universe setup, how would New Labour have done things better? Ignore the deficit I guess, sail on as before, although it appears they had spent all the money already - judging by the written message for Osbourne left on his desk...hurrah, nothing wrong, everything fine...thanks for voting for us again...and then in six months time...oh f$ck!
I strangely enough remember the Winter of Discontent - I was at school at the time. I remember the rampant inflation, the IMF, the Brain Drain, every god-forsaken effort Labour had taken to avoid admitting they had buggered the economy big time. Then, having done it once in the 70s, just to be sure they did it again, watching this time with that bored collective expression as manufacturing, then the service industries have offshored and taken jobs and tax revenue with them.
Now of course you can't even tax the rich to dig yourself out of a hole, 'cos they too will move at the drop of a hat. In the face of globalisaton, Labour just wilted, pursuing its vision of a low-wage economy where we just work for less, for more hours each week...and forget ever retiring.
It's strange how time softened the blows. New Labour were lovely...never a problem with them, nope they weren't insanely obsessed with curbing civil liberties, didn't hate single women with kids (MSBP-fodder I believe they were regarded as) never messed with the schools...All was rosy in those times past...everything just tickydeeboo.
As for the LibDems, we are supposed to think all their supporters want nothing more than to return to the political hinterland, suitably chastened with their brief experience in government.
I lived abroad for 20 years - coalitions are the norm. Only in Britain would you see folk craving with a desperate desire to return to the civil-liberty-hating, xenophobic, neo-con-adoring, PC-savvy, war-mongering, education-mangling one-party Zanu-like political road traffic accident that was called 'Labour-in-Government'.
And all this hand-wringing without the new government actually having done anything substantive yet!