Bread and circuses

So, Labour is proposing price controls on essential food items and a £300m VAT reduction on UK summer holiday attractions?

As weather forecasters predict temperatures in the low 30s Celcius this late-spring Bank Holiday weekend, a long hot summer could provoke civil unrest if prices continue to rise at home and Iran's blockade of the Strait of Hormuz is not lifted, meaning flights to foreign holiday destinations become unaffordable to all but the super-rich due to the increased cost of jet fuel. Last year I wrote to the government suggesting that the 75th anniversary of the Festival of Britain this year would present a perfect opportunity for Labour to promote, in Dr Johnson's immortal phrase, 'the gaiety of nations', as the post-war Attlee government did in 1951. Answer came there none.

The Roman Empire adopted a similarly pragmatic policy, panem et circenses, when it came to appeasing a restive populace in the hope of avoiding riots, although it was done on a much more lavish scale than anything envisaged by Rachel Reeves. Indeed, the Roman model became so deeply embedded in Roman culture that the poet, Juvenal, in his Satires, lambasted his fellow-citizens for surrendering their civic duty in return for free grain and games. (In an echo of this centuries later, Noël Coward was to satirise the Festival of Britain in his acerbic song, Don't Make Fun of the Festival.)

If this latest strategy by the Labour government is intended to make the British feel better about their lot it may come as too little, too late. Having spent their first year or so in office telling the country just how dire was the inheritance of fourteen years of Tory misrule, necessitating yet more austerity and belt-tightening, the country has been plunged into deep despair. By the time the government realised it had overdone the doom-and-gloom rhetoric the damage to morale was done, and none of the very real improvements it has been able to point to since by way of a reset will be enough to convince a jaded electorate that the 'change' they voted for is actually taking place. Their attention has already turned to alternative offerings from the Green Party and Reform UK.

The promise of an average 11 quid off a family visit to a theme park this summer is unlikely to stem the tide of disillusion.

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