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Introduction

October 2011

‘Is the Cameron government a coup?’ – this is the question under discussion here. This, and 44 other questions, orbiting this central question like satellites of love. Such as, ‘Will Cameron kill Clegg?’ and ‘Did Sam Cam invent trip-hop?’. You know, important stuff, like, ‘Is it wise to put Sir Toby Young in charge of all the schools?’, and ‘What is the socio-political significance of Pippa Middleton’s buns?’. Also, ‘Is there a link between The Big Society and the occult?’.

And, okay, there was an election (I’m not mad), but only around 1 in 4 eligible voters backed the Tories. And quite a lot of them were elderly and didn’t know what they were getting into. (Although quite a lot of them were elderly and were really into what they were getting into.) Anyway, somehow the Tories run the country now – enacting policies neither they nor their Liberal Democrat ‘partners’ stood on in the ‘election’.

The Lib Dems properly opposed swift deficit reduction, but soon got on the slash-and-burn bus after the Tories took them into a room and ‘showed them the figures.’ Christ, what went on in there? I’m sure senior Tories did not subject the Liberal Democrats to torture – as we know, the British establishment abhors torture, even on Liberal Democrats. But still.

Anyway, the Tories had to seize power because of the need for strong government in a time of national crisis. Where have we heard that sort of talk before? Since then, it’s all gone a bit hardcore: locking up students; rounding up gypsies; getting friends in the right wing media – i.e. the media – to smear any critical voices (like the BBC); and The Sun attacking anti-Tory bias in an episode of Basil Brush (this is not made up).

There’s the cliquish cronyism: getting bankers in to write banking laws; builders in to write planning laws; and ‘your mate’ in to run the Ministry of Defence.

There’s sending the army into schools: one of the new Orwellian-sounding Free Schools, which were rushed through under procedures usually reserved for counter-terrorism measures, is being run by ex-Army officers.

So, you can see the sources of my anxiety.

The war in Libya didn’t help; I kept hearing sentences on the radio with both the word ‘Cameron’ and the word ‘Gaddaffi’ in them, which created confusion, and also equivalence, inside my mind.

Then, of course, they found the hated dictator cowering in a storm drain with his engraved golden pistol – this is Gaddafi I’m talking about now.

‘Let the desert have him,’ they said, burying him in an unmarked grave (Gaddafi again, apparently).

And, okay, Cameron did not rise from the military – he worked for Carlton Television. But is PR for the telly not the very essence of some modern sort of war?

Mainly, though, it’s the privatisation of absolutely everything: the unelected regime privatising everything in the sort of orgy of (neo)liberalisation more usually associated with a military takeover or an invasion. The NHS, the schools, the forests… it’s like the post-Iraq War fire sale out there. Hit the punch-drunk populace before they know what’s, er, hit them. Then hit them afterwards, too. (Not forgetting the bit in the middle where they start to realise what’s hitting them.)

Add in Tory MPs like Nicholas Boles saying things like, ‘Chaotic . . . in our vocabulary, is a good thing’, as if he’s part of some European punk circus that does amazing things with petrol. And the Economist calling Britain ‘the West’s test tube’, and I am inclined to think everything’s gone a bit batshit.

So, has it? Has everything gone a bit batshit? Let us ask such burning questions of the day, and also some other questions.