It was only in June the Bank of England were warning us NOT to ask for pay-rises because “it’ll only fuel inflation”. Doctors and nurses, knackered from the Pandemic and strapped for cash after a decade of real terms paycuts shouldn't be pushing for more money. Stop being so selfish. It'll just make inflation worse! Jesus, why won't these NHS types think of somebody besides themselves FOR ONCE. Strange, then, to see Govt fiscal policy now reflect giving thirty MILLION people almost precisely that. Similarly, the Tories ejac'd over anyone who’d listen, that the Red Wall had fallen, that Working Class northerners - some of whom had voted Labour for generations - were now turning to the Conservative Party, as the real party of the working people. “You’ve leant us your vote. And we won’t let you down.” Prime Minister Boris Johnson said at the time. Now here we are, not three years later, and the same party have completely abandoned the Levelling Up agenda, with not one discernible achievement attributable to it. And all this to the soundtrack of Food Banks, societal deprivation and minuscule (if any) tax relief. Indeed, if you live in Blackpool, on the average UK salary of £38,000, you're shortly going to be £40-a-month better off. Hooray! Vote Tory! But how you make that £40 pay for your £300 Bulb bill is anyone's guess (and don't worry: entirely your business, personal responsibility and all that. You understand, dear boy). “But.. I thought you said you were going to Level Up? You know, make everything better?” “Well, yes, but in my defence: I did just mean… for me.” How can they square these circles? How can the same party who voted emphatically for the N.I. hike of 2021, now be so emphatically for the cut to it, only a few months later? Was it essential? Or not? If not, why did they say it was? If it was, why are we erasing it now? I’ve seen more believable principals in pornographic cheerleader films. (my metaphors are running on empty. This blog is free. You get what you pay for) For Britons to try to make sense of the modern Conservative party would be, err, ambitious. In that respect, we’d be the very definition of an Aspiration Nation. The Tory party is simply not where sense lives any longer. It's like trying to play Chess on an Alzheimer's ward. From Francois banging on about the war to Cleverly failing to acknowledge Russian interference in the Brexit referendum while going gung-ho over Ukraine’s developments this week… On a good day it’s hypocrisy. On a bad? Mind-bending paradox. Sense. Tories. How could they say this now when they said precisely the opposite a few months ago? And told anyone who disagreed with them that they hated Britain? How is that... possible? We marvel with facial expressions usually reserved for sword-eating base jumpers, like "How do they do that? Just… how?" Of course, sometimes, things do make sense. Fracking for example. In spite of the U-Turn. We banned it in 2019. At the time, Energy Minister, Andrea Leadsom, said “The government has always been clear that shale gas exploration in the UK must be carried out safely”. And that it would not agree to any future fracking “until compelling new evidence is provided” that might prove fracking is (/could be) safe, in Britain. And that was a week after a Whitehall report confirmed we'd already spent £32m exploring it. Yielding nothing. Fuck all. Dick one. Thirty two mill and they've managed to be beaten in the (energy) Generation Game by my year-9 solar-powered calculator; ironically a device I could’ve supplied to them for a reasonable thirty one million and they’d still have been better off. Last week the Fracking ban was lifted. Not because there’s any “compelling new evidence”, not because they’ve worked out how to chuck a couple of Nurofen down the well and stop the earth having a migraine - but probably because Oil/Gas corps have donated to the Conservatives. It was lifted for the same reason there's no Windfall Tax or meaningful price cap. Because (probably, ish, kinda, I'm almost certain) a billionaire CEO told them what they wanted them to do. Because a privately owned fracking firm (Cuadrilla) had their lobbyist hired into Number 10. Because someone somewhere said they wanted Andrea Leadsom to go on TV and say actually, in hindsight, "Fuck what I said before, I'm a massive fan of Shale Gas Extraction and in retrospect I can see now that the regulations were set too narrowly". So that's almost exactly what she said. Still, at least there's some solace to be taken in such flimsy, entirely shakeable foundations. 1) they're probably easier to fracture 2) don't worry: if you don't like them - it'll only be a few months 'til they say the complete opposite.
