The World Turned Upside Down

It's mad. They said (no they didn't) it could never happen, but it has. I agree with Polly Toynbee! She is in "it's all Brown's fault" mode this week - (instead of her default setting, which is "Labour has abolished poverty and made the country healthier, cleverer and fairer", fantasy mode). She says:

Brown's greatest political skill is sending out his men to crush rebellion while banishing rivals abroad to the foreign office or sending them to their political death in the home office. His people warn that a leadership election will split the party. They frighten MPs with the myth that electing a new leader would require an instant election. All this ignores the one big fact: Labour is about to lose so badly they may not live to fight another day. Brown is such an overwhelming electoral albatross that virtually anyone else would give Labour a lift. In such depths where even the best Labour policies are not noticed or heard, a leadership election would give Labour a chance to recapture public attention with a genuine debate on what matters. At 18.2%, there is nothing left to lose. So why won't this happen? I don't know. It's a mystery, but it almost certainly won't.

She wants, above all, Brown gone. And so do I. So we're agreed, Polly and me. From now until he's out out OUT!, nothing and no one will distract us from our campaign to have this criminally incompetent political chancer removed from the office for which he is so unfit. I look forward to our joint efforts bearing fruit. We shall go forth and multiply.

Whoa! Hold the horses there. Slow down. Before this unholy union is consummated, perhaps I'd better check just with whom exactly I'm jumping into bed, I hear you say. And sure enough, you're dead right. Read on...

I have never been tribal about parties when it is policies that count. But whatever punishment Labour deserves, the country does not deserve a Conservative government that looks set to impose economic policies that will damage too many lives. Brown's worst failing is letting them win the argument with the public that deep cuts are necessary and inevitable.

"I've never been tribal...". What? Polly. How could you! Just when I thought you'd changed. Just when I thought we had a chance for happiness, that you'd finally put past foolishness behind you. But no. How wrong I was. You'll never change. You'll always be bonkers and a total stranger not only to economic realities, but to the truth about the hypocrisy on which your whole, privileged life has been built. This marriage is a sham. You've betrayed me just like you've betrayed everyone else in your entire journalistic life. Polly, I'm leaving you. I want a divorce.

Phew. Best decision I've ever made. And she gets worse...

Cameron and Osborne have succeeded in making cuts the test of political virility and honesty: they want to cut and shrink the state anyway. Brown has been left floundering. He could make the Brittan argument loud and clear, but he doesn't, probably because he is a natural fiscal conservative. As a result, he sounds as if he too knows there must be deep cuts but won't admit it – ending up in the worst of all worlds, his perennial resting place.

The irony is that his actions without doubt mitigated the worst effects of the crash, while a Conservative government next year will without doubt exacerbate them dangerously for years to come. Yet Brown cannot or will not articulate a credible economic policy that convinces the public not to vote for Cameron's cuts.

She cleaned out my bank account while we were together, blew all my savings on fake African charities (she'd already burned through her inheritance), remortgaged the house seven times and took-out eighty-two personal loans just to service the debts. Now she's gone back to her house in Tuscany (it's not in her name) and left me here in Britain bankrupt, homeless and humiliated. If only I hadn't listened to her when she said we could spend our way out of debt.

Well, you get the idea folks. I hope. At least the world is the right way up again: Polly's bonkers and Britain's gone bust. Over to Dave and George to clean up the mess.

Polly:

I shall probably die before the last of the 92 hereditaries passes into ancestry. But the Labour party may well be dead before then.

Two silver linings.