A Different Sort

Daveybloke's Cuddly Chancellor, George the Progressively Regressive, has echoed his Bullingdon chum and given the euro-wogs their marching orders. Speaking in Washington, presumably in order to avoid being pelted with the remains of yesterday's Continental breakfast, Osborne personally gave Europe six weeks to sort itself out: "The break-up of Europe would be bad for Britain," he said. It is open to question whether Angela Merkel or Nicolas de Racaille will find this an overwhelming incentive to pull out their fingers; but it is certainly reassuring that Nick Clegg's Deputy Conservatives managed to sneak such a post-imperial, one-worldy sentiment into the speech without the Little Englanders noticing.

As so often with persons whose hobby is inflicting good advice, Osborne had nothing much to say about his own doings, largely on the grounds that he had only been briefed about the euro-wogs: "These discussions in Washington are about the eurozone and the challenges there not about market pressures on the UK." Evidently what happens in the eurozone doesn't matter so much to Britain after all. Still, it was considerate of him to point out that the discussions were in Washington, especially as he and his audience were in Washington at the time; and he did manage to trot out most of the phrases he has learned by heart over the past few months: appropriate action, sticking to the plan and so on; and he also came up with a worthy successor to his comedy bit about the weather being responsible for our ills. It seems we are not, as Daveybloke himself put it so elegantly, kicking the can down the barrel of a double-dip recession; what is actually happening is "a different sort of recovery".

I suppose there is a certain consistency in this. The Big Society is a different sort of society (one where both the rich and the vulnerable take care of themselves); workfare is a different sort of unemployment (one in which the unemployed have to work); Twizzler Lansley is plotting a different sort of National Health Service (one that isn't national or a service, and is only marginally concerned with health); Nick Clegg's Deputy Conservatives are a different sort of liberal democrat (enough said); and whatever else one may say about it, a recovery in which the economy flatlines, inflation rises, employment falls and banks are afraid to lend is certainly different too.