A heart of stone

Oscar Wilde said you’d have to have a heart of stone not to laugh at the death of Little Nell.

One gets his point when looking at the right wing commentariat and their convoluted attempts to deal with the PM and her Tinkerbell economics.

From “this is a real Tory budget at last” and “the last 12 years have been wasted” and “The new Thatcher is born”; to —”it is all the fault of the markets”. Their world is dying and they can see it.

The sense of betrayal is almost physical, after all the poor dears have worked for 40 years for this. They have given lectures, commissioned “research”, spent years writing articles and appearing on radio and TV; all to prepare the ground for this. All to belittle the idea that there is an alternative to trickle down economics and the Laffer curve.

It is hardly surprising that they need some time to come to terms with the fact that their lives have been wasted.

It is a painful process, first they will double down on their lunatic fringe ideas, their newspaper’s owners will insist they hold the line, the think tanks can not change course.

Eventually they might manage to blame Truss for the bad delivery of their dreams, or not being tough enough, or the Blob for undermining them. My own favourite will be the inevitable “it wasn’t tried properly”.

But 40 years of propaganda, 40 years of shameless promotion of ridiculous policies, 40 years of Tory politicians moving to the right, have brought us to this.

They own this but can never admit it. You have to laugh.

Jonty’s Jottings

Economics, trade and Brexit, not necessarily in that order but the dog always comes first.

By Jonty Bloom

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