One-Party Britain, Part 94

Frank Field and Iain Duncan Smith suit each other rather well, because IDS is not at all as he is generally presented as being. Alan "Haze of Dope" Milburn, however, is. That is why he fits so well with the Cameron Project, as does John Hutton, and as would the vile James Purnell, on whom keep an eye.

This may be the Government of withdrawal from Afghanistan. Of the restoration of the link between pensions and earnings. Of taking the working poor out of income tax. Of the abandonment of identity cards. Of electoral reform. Of an inquiry into its predecessor's complicity in torture. Of the dismantlement of the surveillance state. Of a renewed emphasis on a manufacturing-based economy diffused throughout the country. Of the removal of advertisement for prostitution from Job Centres. Of David Cameron's acceptance of the principle of the maximum multiple. Of Iain Duncan Smith's acceptance of the principle of a minimum income guaranteed universally by the State. Of the expansion of nuclear power. Of the fact that one coalition partner really did oppose the Iraq War while the other at least has the decency to pretend that it did so. And of the pursuit of bilateral ties with Russia, with China, with Latin American countries, with the Arab world in general and the United Arab Emirates in particular, with India, with Indonesia, with Japan, with the major Commonwealth countries of Africa, and through the Commonwealth generally, among others.

But this is still a Blairite continuity government, using the present economic travails to impose savage cuts in jobs and services, to remove security of tenure from social housing tenants, to introduce "free" schools, to sell off of our GP services to American healthcare companies, to engage private companies at public expense in order to persecute supposed benefit cheats, to create for-profit universities, to privatise the Royal Mail, to destroy the BBC, to abolish all three Armed Forces by "merging" them under American command, and so on. These agenda are no more popular among Conservative voters in the country at large than they are with anyone else. They are, and have been for half a generation, the agenda of Tony Blair and David Miliband.