Cameron's mouth is watering at the thought of all those lovely cuts ...

[non sociopath skin]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8018783.stm

And is it just me, or have the excesses of the bankers been quietly dropped from the Tories' agenda?

The usual Tory story. Punish the poor. And many will buy it. Ho-hum.

The Skin

[T_i_B]

1. Revealed: Cameron's freebie to apartheid South Africa

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/revealed-camerons-freebie-to-apartheid-south-africa-1674367.html

David Cameron accepted an all-expenses paid trip to apartheid South Africa while Nelson Mandela was still in prison, an updated biography of the Tory leader reveals today.

The trip by Mr Cameron in 1989, when he was a rising star of the Conservative Research Department, was a chance for him to "see for himself" and was funded by a firm that lobbied against the imposition of sanctions on the apartheid regime. Critics described it as a "sanctions-busting jolly" that raised questions about the character of the man who, after a week when the Government's credibility on the economy hit a new low, is now on course to be prime minister in a little more than a year's time.

He met union leaders and black opposition politicians, including the head of the left-wing Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) during the trip, a spokesman said. The trip was organised and funded by Strategy Network International (SNI), created in 1985 specifically to lobby against the imposition of sanctions on South Africa.

Yet when asked by the authors if Mr Cameron wrote a memo or had to report back to the office about his trip, Alistair Cooke – in 1989 his boss at Central Office – said it was "simply a jolly", adding: "It was all terribly relaxed, just a little treat, a perk of the job. The Botha regime was attempting to make itself look less horrible, but I don't regard it as having been of the faintest political consequence."

[non sociopath skin]

2. I have no doubt that Cameron is a much more right-wing figure ...

... than his carefully-cultivated "My mate, Dave" image suggests.

What I'm going to find interesting if - when?- the Tories come to power is the extent to which their brand of neo-conservatism will match Bush's - and Blair's - in its attitude to civil liberties.

An acid test for me will be their attitude to ID cards and the use to which they will be put. I haven't forgotten that, long before 9/11, ID cards was a Tory idea and that, had Major won in '97, we'd probably have had them for ten years now.

The Skin

[fedsron2us]

3. All political parties are lying about what is coming down the road

Labour is keeping quiet about the level of pubic spending cuts that will be required to balance the budget.

Cameron is not telling the truth about taxes.

The harsh truth is that the scale of the deficit cause by the massive bail out of the banking system means that Britain will have to undergo public spending cuts on the scale of those undertaken by Labour in 1978 while also seeing a probable 5p hike in income tax base rates or Class 1 NIC and VAT raised to 20 or 25%.

The alternative is that Britain does an Iceland and defaults on its debt ( this may happen even after the austerity measures).

The bad news for the Tories is that unlike in the 1970s Labour is not going to do the bulk of the spade work for them. In that era the first Thatcherite Chancellor was in fact Dennis Healey who undertook bigger cut backs than any of Mrs Thatcher's occupants of Number 11. This time Darling chose to pass on that option until after the election which means the Tories will be the ones who catch the next Winter of Discontent. Indeed, if Cameron gets to be PM then I expect any attempts to drive through these cuts to fracture the UK with Scotland, and, possibly Wales, opting to leave the Union.

Of course the question no one is asking is whether it was actually necessary to increase the PSBR over 5 times in a single year to bail out the banking system. Neither Brown, Cameron nor any of the vested interests in the media have cared to mention is that much of the debt originated in the private sector not as a result of profligate public spending. In fact the IMF figures show that private debt has been soaring at twice the rate of public debt for more than two decades.

What has happened is that when it looked as though the debts could not be paid the financial elites have simply shuffled the debt onto the public rather than making the bondholders eat the losses.

[non sociopath skin]

4. Excellent analysis, Feds!

So yes, the next General Election will be fought on totally false premises.

Can't see this being a Change Has Gotta Come election in the sense of '79 and '97 - if, as seems likely, Cameron gets in it's likely to be purely because he isn't Gordon Brown rather than because of what he is.

Maybe we're due to go back to frequently-swinging pendulums rather than the sub-generational sinecures of Thatcher-Major and Blair-Brown.

The Skin

[Anarcho-Socialist]

5. Excellent analysis n/t