“Tradition is what you resort to when you don’t have the time or the money to do it right.”

-       Kurt Herbert Alder.

Public sector strikes. Growing union militancy. Increasingly vicious and intractable terrorism. Governments losing their grip, both upon the economy and upon social stability. Currency crisis. Food shortages. Readers with an interest in time travel can revisit the turbulent decade of the 1970s via the BBC’s excellent ‘Rock’n’Roll Years’ documentaries (1974, for example, is here). Alternatively, simply stick around: history seems destined to repeat itself. As an enfeebled Labour administration lurches toward what seems likely to be electoral liquidation, there appears to be a disconcerting ignorance – or perhaps a simple refusal to believe – by much of the British public of the inevitable retrenchment in social services and welfare provision that lies ahead during 2010. The UK government has done itself few favours. While the MPs’ expenses scandal was largely an equal opportunities blunder, Iraq War II was a partisan and cynical exercise on the part of New Labour under Tony Blair that has done much to extinguish faith in the political process. What faith remains in British politicians will be sorely tested by the tough choices that lie ahead, for whoever is unlucky enough to have to take them. Chancellor Darling was allegedly prevented in his Pre-Budget Review by Gordon Brown from taking the pruning shears to Labour’s unruly spending projects; that merely forces the emergency Budget likely to follow this year’s general election to be even more draconian.


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