October 22, 2012  

Tory Tea Party

I don’t like the lazy assumption that the UK follows the US if about 10 years behind, but if you saw as much of the Republican Convention and of the Tory Party Conference as I did then you could not help thinking that the Tories are indeed morphing into Republicans. The Tories do make better speeches; their sentences usually have verbs and, pairs of sentences usually fit together as something like a paragraph – all of which would have been pretty remarkable for the Republicans.

But they both rely on the flag and quite a lot on God; they both want to shoot a burglar and “reform” abortion law, they both would like to drone attack Iran and they both claim that wealth generation and all that makes life worth living is as a result of the private sector. In the Tories’ case this all magnificently came together in the Olympics.

That the Olympics was the single largest public sector investment of the century, that the army had to bail out G4S and that most of the athletes were, by historic standards, magnificently funded by the state (or the lottery) seems to have escaped their attention. But don’t let the facts spoil a good story!

The same old boring incantation came out as ever. State bad, private good

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About Tony Belton

Labour Councillor for Latchmere Ward 1972-2022, now Battersea Park Ward, London Borough of Wandsworth Ever hopeful Spurs supporter; Lane visit to the Lane, 1948 Olympics. Why don't they simply call the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, The Lane? Once understood IT but no longer

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