The reality-based community must make a stand

Realism and responsibility are two of the themes to emerge in Labour’s manifesto, published today. The party wants to be seen as a credible potential government. Fiscal responsibility is at the heart of this, and is described in a strong statement on page one. The next Labour government will cut the deficit every year, and is making no uncosted or unfunded spending commitments. Labour has got real. And responsible.

And yet the election debate, such as it is, and coverage in the media, such as it is, remain unreal. The chancellor of the exchequer has turned himself into an end of the pier novelty act, promising untold fiscal feats, and miraculous conjuring tricks. Tens of billons of pounds will be magicked up or wished away, just like that. New rules have been created – anti-fiscal rules – in which money can be promised or imagined, with few questions being asked about its provenance. So what if these measures are “unfunded”, the chancellor seemed to be saying yesterday. He will find the money… somewhere. He just will. This is New Economics. I had no idea it would look like this.

I am reminded of the comments, usually attributed to George Bush’s adviser Karl Rove, in which he mocked what he called the “reality-based community”: “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he said. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

The public may be kept in the dark about the Tories’ fiscal incontinence if the media continues to choose not to discuss or analyse the magic money which is making all these marvellous Conservative promises deliverable. It is not simply that one rule is being applied to Tory plans and another to those being provided by other parties. A choice is being made not to subject Tory plans to serious scrutiny at all.

Consider the remarks made by David Cameron at prime minister’s question time on January 7 this year:

“The real risk to the NHS is the risk of unfunded spending commitments bringing chaos to our economy, which would wreck our NHS. That is the risk.”

Now, you might have thought that these remarks, made on the record three months ago, at prime minister’s question time, by the prime minister, might be seen as relevant at a time when his own chancellor is promising £8bn a year of unfunded spending commitments to the NHS. You may say that I’m being too literal-minded. You might argue that it is unfair to hold that nice Mr Cameron to account in this way. He is the prime minister after all, he’s very rich, and posh, and someone like me should really just know my place and shut up. The Conservatives have created their own reality and we should learn to live with it.

This, perhaps, explains the thought processes behind those people at the BBC who on Saturday spent several hours telling the Labour party that this clip of Cameron at PMQs was not going to be used in any news bulletin. It is hard to be certain. But somebody within the corporation did relent, and by 10 o’clock on Saturday night there was the clip in the main evening news programme. It has not, I think, been broadcast again since.

“I have never seen a party of government escape scrutiny with such ease,” wrote Nick Cohen in his Observer column yesterday. He is right, of course. There is always a risk of undue deference being shown to the powerful, or to the prime minister of the day. David Dimbleby’s interview with Margaret Thatcher, the morning before polling day in 1987, contained her memorable objection to people who “drivel and drool that they care”. But the tape was broadcast only afternine o’clock that night, even though the words had been available many hours earlier. A braver BBC might have put the interview out as early as lunchtime. But a braver BBC did not exist back then. And perhaps not today, either.

It is not too late. Those of us who still inhabit the reality-based community have a duty to speak up, in all media channels that are available to us, to try and at least question the Conservatives on their plans, such as they are. Mr Osborne’s amateur conjuring should be exposed for the confidence trick that it is.

Michael Foot knew all about exposing fake magicians. He once mocked Keith Joseph, a member of Mrs Thatcher’s cabinet, for reminding him of a conjuror who used to appear at the Palace Theatre in Plymouth, performing a trick in which he would place a gold watch belonging to a member of the audience in a velvet bag and then smash it violently to bits.

“Then on his countenance would come exactly the puzzled look of the right honourable gentleman the Secretary of State,” Foot said. “He would step forward right to the front of the stage and say ‘I am very sorry, I am very sorry. I have forgotten the rest of the trick.’ That’s the situation of the government. They’ve forgotten the rest of the trick. It doesn’t work.”