Elect the Milibandits in 2015, and by the end of their term they’ll clear Britain’s deficit, promised Ed Balls. Then we’ll begin to reduce our national debt.
“Without fiscal discipline and a credible commitment to eliminate the deficit,” explained Ed, “we cannot achieve the stability we need.”
Few will argue. Some, however, will doubt that such commendable goals can be achieved by any government led by our two fast Eddies, Balls and Miliband. Their CV gives little grounds for optimism.
Just imagine a company interviewing an applicant for the CEO job.
“What do you see as the highlights of your career, Mr Smith?”
“Well, I successfully drove my previous employer into bankruptcy.”
“Really? This sounds interesting. How did you achieve that?”
“It wasn’t easy but I was perfectly qualified for the task. At first I made sure that the firm’s outlays consistently and increasingly exceeded its income…”
“As simple as that?”
“Not quite. I also doubled the staff by adding unnecessary jobs, paying my employees way over the odds. And I allowed many of them not to come to work at all while still getting paid.”
“And the board went along?”
“They wouldn’t have of course, had they known. But I hired some capable youngsters to cook the books, at the same time planting glowing reviews of the company in the trade press. The board members didn’t bother to do any checking of their own, and after a few years the company was well and truly… well, on the rocks.”
“Excellent! You’re just the man we’re looking for!”
If you think this is a somewhat unlikely scenario, marvel at modern politics. For Ed Balls and Ed Miliband both had major economic posts in the previous Labour government (Treasury Economic Secretary and Secretary for Energy respectively).
Hence they had key roles to play in using public finances for party political purposes, bribing the electorate with unprecedented handouts, using extortionist taxation to destroy as much enterprise as possible, borrowing and printing money with criminal irresponsibility, running insane deficits, driving the national debt over £16 trillion, straining public services to breaking point by opening Britain’s borders to millions of potential Labour voters, inviting (and religiously complying with) miles of EU red tape and complementing those outrages with epic mismanagement.
Yet their victory in the next election isn’t just possible, but likely. What does this say about our present government? The Tory party? The electorate?
Leaving such sweeping questions aside for the moment, let’s ask an easier one: “And how do you propose to balance the books, Ed, considering your personal record and your party’s general outlook on life?”
It would be irresponsible, answered Ed with the swiftness of a used-car salesman, “to make detailed commitments and difficult judgments about what will happen in two or three years’ time.”
Yes, but can you give us a teeny-weeny whiff of your plans?
Well, if you insist. We’ll raise the top tax rate to 50 percent to reduce the deficit “more fairly” and in general follow the route charted by Denis Healey who in 1973 promised to “squeeze the rich until the pips squeak.”
The rest of the Milibandits’ economics remains unsaid, but what Ed has already revealed is enough. They’re going to do all the same things they’ve always done, causing the same economic catastrophe they’ve always caused.
That’s fine with all factions of the Labour party, including the Blairites. By all means, they say, do all those things when elected. But for Tony’s sake don’t talk that way before you’re elected. Are you insane? Talk like Adam Smith to get in, then start acting like Vladimir Lenin – isn’t that the proven model?
“The whole point of New Labour,” explained one prominent Blairite, “was it showed you could help the poor and wealth creators at the same time.”
It didn’t. It promised it would and afterwards claimed it did. In between New Labour did exactly the same thing socialists always do: it destroyed the economy first and Britain’s social fabric second.
The same Blairite complained that, “The trouble is they [the Milibandits] are economically illiterate and have no understanding of business or profits.”
That’s not what he meant. The trouble, according to the Blairites, is that the Milibandits don’t know how to conceal their economic illiteracy. Haven’t they learned anything from Tony? Talk Smith, act Lenin – that’s the trick.
That Labour remains Labour is really no surprise. A leopard can jump through circus hoops and stand on its hind legs, yet it can’t change its spots. But how can the electorate go along with that evil nonsense to a point where the Milibandits are consistently leading in the polls?
That, I’m afraid, isn’t surprising either. The nation has been thoroughly corrupted by socialism, as perpetrated by all three parliamentary parties. At the heart of this pernicious philosophy lies an appeal to envy and concomitant hatred of hard-earned economic success.
The argument that attacking enterprise is tantamount to cutting off your nose to spite your face is sound, but it doesn’t work. The British no longer mind suffering as long as they can be sure that some, preferably the squeezed ‘rich’, will suffer more.
That’s why no government – and certainly not Labour – will ever do what any sound economist knows has to be done: gradually eliminating the welfare state, drastically reducing taxation, providing incentives for investment and enterprise, banning deficit spending in peacetime, reducing the size and power of the state.
But socialism, whoever preaches and practises it, isn’t about sound economics or indeed reason in general. It’s about activating people’s most shameful and destructive instincts, bribing and cajoling them into committing deadly sins.
At least Tory leaders have to mitigate their wickedness to some extent – there’s still some residual grassroots pressure left, something Labour leaders don’t feel. Dave and George may be evil, but they’re marginally the lesser evil.
If we fail to realise this by 2015, it’ll be Balls to us all.