*sigh*

Incidents like this, where a young Black man is shot dead when out on a grocery run by a paranoid wannabe cop who is not even arrested because he claimed it was in self defence, are why I said yesterday I’m actually more pessimistic than I was at the time the War on Iraq got started. It’s just depressing to realise these can still happen in 2012 and even more so to realise there some people — liberal, well meaning, smart — are willing and even eager to minimise the outrageousness of this murder. For the first time I’m glad Sandra isn’t here to see this; this sort of thing would’ve broken her heart.

As would’ve the dismantlement of the NHS int he final teardown of the welfare state, something she has fought again her whole life. We thought New Labour was bad, but she knew that the Tories would be even worse and she was right.

Sandra was worried that chances were no longer possible without serious violence; I’m more and more convinced she was right and wondering why more explosions of outrage like the London riots haven’t happened yet.

Two more years of cuts and the Olympics — what fun!

As predicted by BBC Newsnight bod Paul Mason:

The Coalition will fall. Not because of protest, not because of unpopularity but because everytime it tries to do something serious a bit falls off the machine. If they don’t get AV and Vince Cable does not get radical banking reform, then by the time the public sector job losses are eating into their popularity, around party conference time, the Libdems will call it a day. Even more audaciously I will predict the outcome: no election but a Second Coalition to be formed between the Conservatives, an inner core of Orange Book Libdem leaders and various Unionists, with a slim majority. One or two Labour rightwingers, disgruntled by Ed Miliband, may also be tempted to join. Cameron will face down the Conservative right and embrace Coalition government as a modus operandi until 2015. Labour, locked in a policy review process and possibly still reeling from (8) above, will avoid an election.

Jamie had some fun with the second part of that prediction, but I want to look at the first part. Protests, especially in the UK, do not have a particularly good track record in bringing governments down, or even get them to change their minds, but the ConDems are more vulnerable than most, largely due to the Dem part of it and its internal contradictions. Even then, it’s hard to imagine protests, even ones as big as the 2003 anti-war protests, will do much to disrupt the coalition, other than to accelerate the weakening of the machine as Mason puts it.

However, there is the potential for a huge, embarassing clusterfuck to happen smack dab in the middle of the ConDem’s reign. I’m talking of course about the 2012 London Olympics, enthusiasm for which never was that high in the first place, which will make the perfect opportunity for anybody fed up with the coalition’s policies to show their displeasure in front of the whole world. BBC London News today reported that a large part of the success of the Vancouver Winter Olympics was due to the large number of well trained, friendly volunteers at the games — image what could happen if thousands of disgruntled students, jobseekers and other victims of ConDem policies decide to take to the streets during the London games…

What struck me was the contrast between what will be everyday life in England after two years of budget cuts, slashed social services and a crumbling social infrastructure and the attempt to turn London in the world’s largest potemkin village as the Olympics come to visit. Normally the general public is not keen on anybody who politicises the Olympics, but when many members of it will be victims of ConDemmed policies themselves, how will that change?

The Tory party at its worst

Ann Widdecombe is the picture of elegance dancing on Strictly

No, not lord Young telling the unemployed they “never had it as good”, Ann Widdecombe making a fool of herself on Strictly Come Dancing. It may be a small thing in the scheme of things, but it show the essential pettiness and nastiness disguised as humour of much of the Tory party.

As you know, Strictly Come Dancing is a lighthearted entertainment show and dance competition featuring a dozen or so celebrities who’ve never had dancing lessons and their professional partners. Some of the celebs find out that they’re actually good at show dancing, some find out they’re crap and weeks of training doesn’t change that much, while most muddle through for shorter or longer periods. Widdecombe is of the second category, hopeless and with no chance of improving. There’s no shame in being a bad dancer, but what Widdecombe does goes against the spirit of the show: she doesn’t even attempt to try and dance to the best of her abilities, but flat out refuses to do anything she deems indecent. Though how shaking your hips is indecent while being dragged over the dance floor legs akimbo with your bum sticking out isn’t, I’ll never know.

Widdecombe than is even worse than John Sargent, who did try his best to dance when was in the programme, but treated it as an extended joke once it became clear he had the audience on his side and would never be voted off, no matter how dismal the judges scored him. He at least withdrew once the joke had stopped being funny. I can’t see Widdecombe doing that: she has a much too huge ego. As a result, each week better and more deserving dancers are voted off. It’s typical Tory to abuse priviledge this way, to disguise ego as principle.

Now what?

So what’s going to happen now there’s a hung parliament in the UK? First, we need to remember the incessant background noise send out through the media from the City:

Of course, the guys in braces who pop up on Sky every five minutes aren’t lowering themselves to support any given party. What they all want is strong government, strong enough to take the necessary measures on the deficit, and they want it soon. Soon, like Monday morning? ventures the tremulous interviewer, as though in the presence of an oracle. Well, perhaps Tuesday afternoon at the latest, says man in braces, chewing his lip, but soon, or the markets will be displeased, as though this displeasure came from De Lawd Above and has nothing to do with him and his confreres.

Once again, this is much like the same pressure seen after the 2000 US presidental elections to get a quick decision, rather than the right decision, but then it was the Republican party itself, now it’s the “financial markets” directly, worrying that if the wrong government gets in they won’t deliver the deep spending cuts they want. Spending cuts that are needed to free up the money that’s needed for the UK government to pay back the billions it had to borrow to save the very same “financial markets” from their own fuckups two years ago. They want their pound of flesh and they need a “strong government”, preferably a dependable Tory one, to deliver it. It would mean that the scenes Johann Hari witnessed in Hammersmith and Fulham will be repeated all over the UK:

She “panicked” when a bill came through saying she had to pay £12.50 for every hour of care she needed. “I thought, ‘Oh my God, how am I going to do this?’ The more care you need, the higher your bill, so the most disabled people got the highest charges. Everyone was distraught. I had friends who had to choose between having the heating on in winter and paying for their care … I know a 90-year-old woman with macular degeneration who can’t see, and she had to stop her services. There are lots of people who have been left to rot, with nobody checking any more that they’re OK, and I’m sure some of them have ended up in hospital or have died.” One of the council’s senior social services managers seems to have confirmed this, warning in a leaked memo that the charges could place the vulnerable “at risk”.

Debbie co-founded an organisation to fight back – the Hammersmith and Fulham Coalition Against Community Care Cuts – and, after appealing, she finally had her charges cancelled. “But there are a lot of people who can’t appeal,” she says. “You’re talking about very vulnerable people – the very old, the mentally ill, the blind. A lot don’t know how, or would be ruled to have to pay anyway, because the rules are so arbitrary. Now they’re being taken to debt-collection agencies for non-payment. I know an 82-year-old woman who’s never been in debt in her life who is being taken to a debt-collection agency for care she needs just to keep going… They want volunteers to do it instead. But you don’t want to have to ask your friends or a volunteer to pull up your knickers for you.”

That’s why it’s good Gordon Brown has not resigned and should resist the pressure to resign; it makes it that much harder to install a Tory government by coup de main. The weak link is of course Nick Clegg: is he tough enough to stand up to pressure to form a government with the Tories rather than with Labour, tough enough not to be fobbed off with vague promises of electorial reform. If we look at the popular vote more than half the voters voted for left of center parties, so selling a Tory-Liberal coalition as “the will of the voters” is a bit of a cheek, but that seems to be the recieved wisdom the media are parroting. Don’t do it Nick!

First let them do no harm

More evidence for the fact that getting a hung parliament is the best that could happen in the UK elections. Niall Fergueson is urging the Tories on to crash the economy:

‘There is a very real danger that [things] could now spiral, Greek style, out of all control if foreign confidence in sterling slumps and long-term interest rates rise. Mr Cameron needs to do two things right away. He must instruct George Osborne to wield the axe ruthlessly with the aim of returning to a balanced budget over a credible eight- to ten-year timeframe.

That means not only reversing Labour’s disastrous expansion of public sector spending, but also encouraging business growth with incentives to innovate, invest and work. At the same time, he needs to initiate talks with the IMF in case external support proves to be necessary. In both cases, it is much better to act sooner than later. The mess we are in is the result of 13 squandered years in which an unprincipled government frittered away the achievements of the Thatcher era. We are back not just in 1979, but in 1976, the last time the IMF had to bail Britain out as a consequence of Labour’s economic mismanagement.’

Drastically cutting government spending at a time of economic crisis worked so well in getting the world out of the Depression in the 1930ties, but then this isn’t about economics, but ideology, as Jamie notes. Talking about “the achievements of the Thatcher era”, in which much of the industrial strength of Britain was destroyed so that yuppies could roam free, is a dead giveaway. Hence the need to not let the Tories win this elections is just as great as to let Labour lose: vote tactically, vote hung parliament. First, let them do no harm.

(Crossposted from Prog Gold.)