The Right Thing To Do

Faced with continuing economic borborhygmus, and the urgent political need to distance itself from the standard Conservative policy of being cheap and nasty with the poor and foreign, New New Labour has demonstrated once more its characteristic blend of brutal decisiveness in the face of the vulnerable and sphincter-wobbling deference in the face of the Daily Mail. The pittance already given to people claiming asylum in Britain will be cut or frozen in the autumn, on the sensible grounds that it is more prudent to take from someone who cannot hit back than to deny a little extra to someone who can. As an additional frisson for the righteous of the right, family values will be upheld thanks to the freezing of support for single parents and the cutting of support for unmarried adults; and the Government will continue to prevent asylum seekers from working and paying tax, in the hope that the indigenous labour force will thereby become reconciled to the necessary strictures soon to be imposed upon it.