They used to say that the Labour Party owed more to Methodism than Marx but now it looks more like Matalan. Everything is for sale! Somewhere along the line the party ditched its notions of citizenship and began to treat us as employees. The difference is not always apparent but when it is apparent it is glaring. Chief amongst the changes is the fact that bargaining is done through wages (taxation) rather than rules of civic purpose. The assumption is that tax cuts are a virtue in themselves, as opposed to a means whereby we can agree (or disagree) as to how that spending is applied. Hence the enormous sums given to the banks and without firm demands about what that money will buy, only the vaguest of "understandings" about holding off from foreclosures. This is not the same as policy. The reason the banks have tipped the economies of the world into recession is that they have treated debts as assets and got wise to each other at roughly the same time: if it is true that they have been "gambling" it is also true that they have shown their cards. Darling has acted not as a paymaster (which is the role the banks have required of him) but as an institutional investor, an altogether different character. The latest round of budgeting aims to do little more than encourage shopping, which is what got us in this mess in the first place. Herein lies the riddle of the corporate state: charged with the welfare of the nation, the Government has taken the side of PLC rather than the people to whom it is beholden, it would seem, only at elections.
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