Keep Smiling Through

Some of the Glorious Successor's subtler enemies have persuaded him that "defiant optimism" will gain him ten more years in Downing Street, apparently on the principle that if the rabbit grins widely enough into the onrushing headlights the car will stop and give it a lift. Accordingly, the Glorious Successor is all set to promise us "a decade of shared prosperity", in which protection for entrepreneurs like Serco and Rupert Murdoch will be combined with enhancement of frontline public services for people who can pay for them. Thanks to our being so superbly placed to ride out the recession that every other developed country has ridden it out before us, the recovery is still so fragile that it can be wrecked by kicking the Glorious Successor out of Downing Street and allowing Daveybloke to pursue exactly the same policies with a slightly different rhetorical coating. Choice is a wonderful thing. The Glorious Successor has also been advised to make some sort of show at concern for "those who were hit hardest by the recession, the people on middle and modest incomes who don't want any special favours", as opposed to those on low incomes who have the cheek to claim benefits. The Glorious Successor also seems to have developed a peculiar obsession with the idea that the middle of a recession is a wonderful time to start up a small business: "If we continue with the tough decisions we have made" and which got us into this mess in the first place, "unemployment will start to drop this year and more small businesses will open and flourish", because "Britain's dynamic entrepreneurs ... have defied the recession to start up nearly half a million new businesses". Assuming the majority haven't already gone bust (and no doubt the Glorious Successor would inform us if this were so), by the time the recovery sets in our economy will have overtaken China's. The good news is that the Glorious Successor has finally decided what Britishness means: "We are a nation that combines responsibility with fairness, compassion with aspiration - always reaching higher, dreaming bigger, aiming for ever greater things".