LABOUR CAN'T AFFORD FOR THIS TO BECOME THE DIVIDE:

For the Lib-Cons, this is an excuse to shrink the state: Next week the deficit hawks will have a field day, but Labour needs to shift ground if it's going to be a real opposition (Seumas Milne, 6/16/10, guardian.co.uk)

The lemmings are heading for the cliff, and there seems to be no stopping them now. Cuts mania has got Britain's coalition in its grip, and next week's emergency budget promises to be a field day for the deficit hawks. For weeks we have been softened up with the drumbeat of debt, orchestrated by a media – including the BBC – which endlessly repeats as fact the catechism that the deficit is a mortal threat and cuts the only way out.

Whatever the evidence or the arguments, the answer is always the same. So now we're primed for higher taxes, weighted towards the poorest through increased VAT; a Liberal Democrat-led attack on "gold-plated" public sector pensions, which average £4,000 a year in local government and £6,000 in the health service; and the prospect of a scythe through public services that has already taken chunks out of free school meals and support for the young unemployed. [...]

What's become clearer is that for the Lib-Con leaders and their strongest supporters, the deficit is an ideal excuse to do something they were determined to do in any case: shrink the state. This week Spectator editor Fraser Nelson complained that better borrowing figures risked undermining the case for cuts, which should be pushed through "come what may". What is driving the Tory thirst for cuts above all is classic small-state Thatcherism sailing under a phoney flag of necessity.

If the vision of the two parties becomes growing the state vs. shrinking it the Tories are in for a long stay in power.

Posted by Orrin Judd at June 17, 2010 10:53 AM