Cut Off The Balls

Any examination of the Mail and Telegraph newspapers confirms that the Coalition’s savage cuts in services and in spending power, the road to yet further economic ruin, are no more popular with Conservative supporters, Middle England, or what have you, than they are with anyone else.

The Coalition of Resistance to them can and must include Conservative supporters, Middle England, the Mail and Telegraph newspapers, and what have you. They would flock to a party which promised to bring back their libraries, their buses, and so on. Five by-election results and numerous local election results have indicated that they are already doing so.

Meanwhile, certain Labour councils in the North East have long been criticised, not without cause, for their reluctance to appoint from without. Across the public sector, the ability to recruit the best people from the national field depends on maintaining national pay structures. People like that who come here want to live in, say, Lanchester. That is no cheaper than living in a comparable part of any other area.

Yet what do we get instead? Ed Balls. If it is not the Blairobite partisans of David Miliband as the only legitimate heir, then it is this.

The case for a new party in this Parliament, already set out in part here and here, is rapidly becoming unanswerable. What are the unions, the co-ops, and their MPs waiting for? What, exactly? And why, exactly?