False economy

So all these years of austerity have been for nothing? Well, what a surprise! 

This is what you get after a long run of Tory government. It happened after eighteen Thatcher/Major years and it's happening again after thirteen Cameron/May/Johnson/Truss/Sunak years. But the savage irony of the RAAC (reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete) scandal is heightened by David Cameron and George Osborne's constant bad-mouthing of the Labour governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown for allegedly failing to "fix the roof while the sun was shining". I bet they wish they hadn't said that now (like they care!).

Labour's Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme was scrapped by incoming Tory Education Secretary, Michael Gove, in 2010 on the grounds that it was "bureaucratic and wasteful". It may well have been but ditching it outright was indefensible at the time and looks positively negligent now. The last local authority school in England to be completed under the BSF scheme was just round the corner from where I was living at the time and was only made possible after the council launched a judicial review against Gove's decision to scrap the project, which had already been green-lighted, and won.

Of course, the Tories' game plan in government is always to hollow out the state, privatise as many public assets as possible, run the public realm into the ground, enriching themselves and their mates in the process - and leave the mess for the next Labour government to sort out. Viewed in this light, their accusation of Labour financial incompetence and mismanagement in government is worse than disingenuous, it's a downright, barefaced lie. 

Okay, so outgoing Labour Treasury Secretary, Liam Byrne's cheeky note to his successor, 'sorry, there's no money left', fell flat. It was ill-advised and a hostage to fortune which he admits haunts him still. It remains a stick with which the Tories will always beat Labour. But let's be clear, the UK's economic woes were triggered by the global banking collapse, caused by 'casino' banking practices and the US's sub-prime mortgage fiasco. The blame lies squarely with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac not Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

The question we need to ask ourselves, though, is why, as an electorate, we so consistently fall for these Tory lies. Why is it that, having returned a Labour government to sort out the Tories' mess, we inevitably re-elect them as soon as Labour has steadied the ship? It's a definition of insanity that one repeats the same action expecting a different outcome. If this is true, then the British (well, English really) must be stark, staring bonkers.

The RAAC crisis is just the latest in a sorry saga of Tory failure and mismanagement in government. The whole system is broken, nothing works and this tired, demoralised and discredited Tory administration is never going to sort out the mess of its own making - certainly not in the sixteen months (max) of its remaining tenure. So what follows? Do we re-elect them in the hope of their finding the energy, commitment - and cash - to fix the roof (real and metaphorical) or do we bring Labour back and let them try their luck?

Some will argue 'better the devil you know' but, based on previous Tory internicine strife, there's absolutely no guarantee that a new Tory government wouldn't immediately plunge into yet another leadership contest, while the country goes further to the dogs - in fact it's almost a certainty. But what of Labour? With the best will in the world (which they can't rely on) there's a heck of a massive job to do which will cost untold billions at a time when, once again, there's no money left.

But, where there's a will, there's a way, as Labour proved in 1945. If Keir Starmer can take up the mantle of Clement Attlee as Prime Minister it's possible he could do it. But it will be a gargantuan task and he will need to accept that, like Attlee, he may not be rewarded for success by re-election. Attlee was in office for one term only before being defeated by Winston Churchill. The British electorate is fickle and their large- and small-c conservatism might not tolerate a Labour government for the decade (at least) that will be required to get the UK back in track.

Frankly, you wonder why anyone would want the job.

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