Surely that wasn’t serious?

I’ve just had the pleasure of sitting through David Cameron’s speech. I took a break from my work and gave it my full attention. I work from home, you see, and with the blinds closed so my neighbours think I’m on the dole. I sometimes make a point of getting up early, pouring myself a coffee and waving them off from the balcony at 8am, just so they think I’m unemployed. I don’t think they care though.

During the speech, in which the PM reassured us that Labour like borrowing money and the Conservatives don’t, the government borrowed another £2,405,592. This is a lot of money in 50 minutes, especially when the main thrust of your speech is about how debt is bad. But I sensed Cameron’s movement to a new narrative, possibly in preparation for 2015. He said something like (and I can’t really be bothered to look it up) “if we changed course, all of the sacrifice would go to waste”. It’s, incidentally, the same line that’s used to defend our continued operation in Afghanistan.

Of course, economies don’t work quite like that. The Economy Fairy doesn’t notice you’ve been in quite a lot of pain for some time and then suddenly reward you with economic growth. What we’re doing by staying on the same track is making the situation worse, digging ourselves into an even deeper hole, and ultimately the pain is for nothing. It was really quite something for Cameron to acknowledge that our main trading partners in the EU (Italy, France and Spain) are all suffering, yet propose nothing to deal with domestic demand, which would at least somewhat mitigate the current crisis.

One of the things that also stood out was his desire to “spread privilege”. Some on Twitter thought this sounded a bit icky, but I personally think it sounds like it’d be absolutely delicious on toast. Of course, Privilege Spread cannot be made available to everyone, as “privilege” (noun) is “a special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to one person or group of people.” So unless he’s prefacing a new age of the British Empire (calm down, Niall Ferguson, it’s just a joke) then this line is a house of cards. Time for a re-think.

Another claim he made, or re-made – and was duly re-swallowed by the commentariat – referred to the “1m private sector jobs created under this government”. Well fiddle-me-this, 209k of those jobs are accounted for by the simple switching of FE employees from the public to the private sector. Why isn’t anyone in the media holding him to account on this? It’s so blatant it’s embarrassing that it’s always listed as one of this government’s greatest achievements.

Then he said something about the Nazis, I invoked Godwin’s Law and therefore Cameron lost.