Theresa May: "AUSTERITY IS OVER"

The absolute brass neck of Theresa may's latest U-turn

http://anotherangryvoice.blogspot.co.nz/2017/06/the-absolute-brass-neck-of-theresa-mays.html

The front page of the Times is blaring that Theresa May has told her Tory MPs that "Austerity is over", and while this can be seen as a huge victory for people like me who stood almost alone at times to decry austerity dogma as the socially and economically ruinous hard-right fanaticism that it is, there are several issues to consider.

Liar liar

You'd be a fool to trust her. After crying crocodile tears about social mobility on the steps of Downing Street one of her first acts as Prime Minister was to scrap the student grants that helped kids from poor backgrounds go to university.

In all likelihood this declaration that "austerity is over" is just another Tory rebranding exercise. They'll carry on with the cuts, but they'll simply stop using the word "austerity" to describe what they're doing.

Ideological vandalism

After seven ruinous years of self-defeating Tory austerity dogma the budget deficit still stands at over £50 billion.

If the Tories drop austerity now in favour of the kind of investment-based recovery strategy that people like me, the Green Party and the left of the Labour Party have been calling for ever since 2010, then they'll be demonstrating that the austerity agenda was never necessary at all, and was in fact just ideologically driven Tory wickedness.

Such an abrupt U-turn would mean that every single Tory cut over the last seven years was carried out for ideological reasons.

Every closed A&E, police station, Sure Start centre, fire station, maternity ward, library, public toilet, NHS walk in centre, women's refuge, and social care service was closed down for Tory ideology, not necessity.

20,000 police jobs, 10,000 fire service jobs, tens of thousands of NHS jobs, hundreds of thousands of jobs across local government and the social care sector. All scrapped for ideological reasons, not necessity.

Every scrapped infrastructure project (like all those flood defence schemes) was binned for ideological purposes, not because it was necessary

Every year of below inflation pay freezes for our hard-working public sector employees, every cut to disability benefits, every cut to child welfare, every cut to in-work benefits. All imposed for ideological reasons, not necessity.

Legal aid gutted and access to the justice system trashed for ideological reasons, not necessity.

Every one of the 400,000 extra children plunged into lives of growing up in poverty. A deliberate Tory choice, not a necessity.

If Theresa May drops austerity now then it becomes clear that all of this social and economic vandalism was committed because the Tories wanted to do it, not because it was even remotely necessary.

Opportunism

Saying that austerity is something that can be scrapped when it becomes clear the public have turned against is an absolute demonstration that it was never necessary in the first place.

It's also a demonstration of Theresa May's directionless opportunism. She's willing to do anything to cling to power. If she's willing to burn the Northern Ireland peace process on her bonfire of vanity, then an admission that the last seven years of ruinous Tory economic dogma was inflicted by choice hardly seems exceptional.

Imagine the brass neck of it. She sat in government for seven long years punishing the poor and ordinary whilst lavishing huge giveaways on the corporations and the mega-rich, and now in a desperate attempt to rebrand herself, she's saying that all of the suffering and economic destruction she helped to inflict wasn't even necessary!

The Magic Money Tree

During the election campaign Theresa May and several other senior Tories tried to claim that Labour's investment-based economic strategy was akin to harvesting a "magic money tree". Now that Theresa May has seen the public tide turning against austerity and abandoned it, she's either got to admit that she believes in "magic money trees", or she's got to admit that she knew all along that the "magic money tree" stuff was lamentable economic idiot fodder designed to fool the absolutely gullible into voting Tory.

The absolute brass neck. Saying #AusterityIsOver with the deficit at £50bn is an admission that austerity was never necessary to begin with pic.twitter.com/IEnCpjgTWA

— Another Angry Voice (@Angry_Voice) June 13, 2017

New Labour is dead

Jeremy Corbyn didn't even win a majority, but it's given Theresa May such a fright that she's throwing away seven years of Tory economic policy within a week of the election!

Just imagine if Ed Miliband had had the brains and courage to sack the hard-right austerity-lite fools Ed Balls and Chris Leslie and properly oppose the Tories in the 2015 General Election campaign.

The ONLY reason the Tories got away with imposing such appalling austerity madness on the UK economy for so long was that the right-wing New Labour lot failed to properly oppose it.

As soon as the Tories have faced a bit of opposition to their ruinous austerity dogma they're folding like a pack of cards.

Ed Balls has already gone, but Chris Leslie is still there, and now that Theresa May is abandoning austerity, he's going to find himself totally isolated within the Labour Party and economically to the right of the Tory party!

If he had any self-awareness or basic decency whatever he would resign from the Labour Party and from front line politics immediately for the damage he's helped the Tories inflict on our country. But he doesn't have any self-awareness decency at all judging by his ridiculous post-election attack on Jeremy Corbyn.

What are they going to do?

Now that they've decided to throw their ruinous austerity dogma in the bin it's absolutely clear that only an absolute mug would believe anything the Tories say about the economy.

They told us over and over again that there was no choice, but now that austerity is politically toxic, and it serves their own self-interest to abandon it, it's suddenly not necessary at all!

So what are they going to do now that they've U-turned on their core economic strategy?

Steal the investment-based economic policies off the Labour Party left and then pretend that they haven't spent the last seven years ridiculing and deriding Keynesian style investment economics?

You wouldn't put it beyond the opportunistic bastards would you?

You also wouldn't put it beyond them to simply carry on with ruinous austerity economics, but just rebrand it as something else (Prudence? Judiciousness? Thrift?)

You also wouldn't put it beyond them to simply carry on with ruinous austerity economics, but just rebrand it as something else (Prudence? Judiciousness? Thrift?)

Theresa May signals austerity is over and 

overhaul of Brexit plans

The Prime Minister's new top aide said approach to cuts and EU helped Labour in the election

Theresa May’s new chief of staff has signalled that the Government will look again at austerity and its Brexit plans.

Gavin Barwell explained that a key reason his party lost the election is because it struggled to convince people that their “quality of life” would improve under the Tories, while Jeremy Corbyn tapped into their concerns.

The DUP have arrived at Downing Street to hammer out a deal that would give Theresa May a working majority in the Commons.

The Northern Irish party may extract commitments to retain the triple lock on pensions and drop plans to means test the winter fuel payment in return for its support.

Meanwhile, Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson said Ms May should work with other parties to form a consensus on Brexit, having met the Prime Minister at Downing Street.

Ms May told Tory MPs at a crunch meeting last night she would listen to all voices in her party on Brexit, in the wake of the election result.

Mr Barwell , who took up his position in No 10 after losing his Croydon Central seat to Labour, told BBC’s Panorama programme that years of spending cuts had taken their toll.

“There's a conversation I particularly remember with a teacher who had voted for me in 2010 and 2015 and said 'you know I understand the need for a pay freeze for a few years to deal with the deficit but you're now asking for that to go on potentially for 10 or 11 years and that's too much,” he said.

“I think back to the speech that Theresa gave outside No 10 on her first day as Prime Minister, where she made this really powerful point that the country as a whole is doing well economically but not everyone is seeing the benefits of that success.”

He went on: “And I’d like to have seen more of that tone in our campaign, because I think you have to have something to say to people who understand the need for tough decisions but nonetheless need to feel that if ‘I vote for you, my quality of life is going to improve over the next five years’.

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“That is something that Jeremy Corbyn was able to tap into.”

Mr Barwell, who lost his marginal seat by around 5,000 votes, also said there was evidence that “angry” Remain voters had ditched the Tories.

He said: “We are very clear in my seat, that the area of the constituency where Labour did best was the area that had voted heavily for Remain… So there's clearly evidence, I think, that people are angry about Brexit still, Jeremy Corbyn somehow managed to get them behind him.”

“We do need to make sure that people that are Conservative-minded that voted Remain in the referendum are happy to continue supporting our party.”

Ms Davidson, whose influence has grown dramatically with the election of 13 Tories north of the border, has already broken cover to say “this isn't just going to be a Tory Brexit”.

After attending the Prime Minister's political cabinet on Monday, she told BBC News: “I'm suggesting that the Conservative Party works with those both within the House of Commons and with people without to ensure that as we leave the EU we have a Brexit that works for the economy and puts that first.

“There was a real sense around the cabinet table today, as you would expect from centre right politicians, that that is the primacy we're looking for.”

Ms Davidson suggested the Government may shift its priority from cutting immigration to ensuring a good deal for business and the economy.

After Ms May addressed the 1922 Committee of backbench Tory MPs on Monday, some of those present suggested the PM would consult more with business on her approach to the talks.

Ms Davidson said: “We do have to make sure that we invite other people in now. This isn't just going to be a Tory Brexit, this is going to have to involve the whole country.

“We can make a big, bold offer that brings the country with us, that brings people in from the other side of the aisle in the House of Commons but also brings people in from outside the Commons too.”

A Russian view

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The Irish Republican party will travel to the House of Commons - despite their century-long policy of abstention in the UK Parliament
SINN Fein’s seven MPs will fly into London today to take up their Commons offices – sparking Tory fears they may try to wreck the Prime Minister’s wafer thin majority.

This report is contradicted by the Guardian

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