The Age of Aquarius

Ben Wildsmith

You’d imagine that whatever passes for Liz Truss’s friends are rallying around her this weekend, proffering Prosecco and Gloria Gaynor CDs.

‘The worst is over, babes. The UK never deserved you,,,’

Nobody could deny the second part of that, but as the press fixates on the possibility of us getting back together with our toxic ex, it could be that Liz’s nightmare has only just begun.

As the Age of Pisces draws to a close, we can expect to see the rehabilitation of horned beasts in the iconography of the world.

After 2000 years of representing evil, the mantle will pass to fish as we transfer our revulsion for anything to do with Aries the ram to Piscean imagery and rush headlong into the Age of Aquarius.

The passing of an Age demands the active rejection of its predecessor, which is why the devil has horns and Christians have stickers of fish on their cars.

Alright Russell Grant, you might ask, but what has this got to do with Liz Truss?

Trickledown

Liz stands at the intersecting point of two paths of history: the demographic shift that will see Millennials outnumber Baby Boomers at the ballot box, and the global unravelling of trickledown economics as a credible theory.

She wasn’t undone by personal scandal like Boris and didn’t even have time to generate the sort of negative polling figures that saw the words ‘Ian Duncan-Smith’ assume the marketing appeal of botulism.

Her sensational bum’s rush was rooted in ideology.

The UK has, for 40 years, broadly adhered to the cobbled together version of free market economics that Keith Joseph taught Margaret Thatcher in the mid-1970s.

It has permeated national life so fully that its tenets have come to be accepted by most of the populace as facts of life and to challenge them has been to attract charges of blasphemy and trial by humiliation.

Whilst governments have varied in how devoutly they applied these ideas, any deviation has been explained as a regrettable emergency measure on the way to ideological purity.

It is telling that recent events have taken place during a long-running rail strike and against the backdrop of punishing energy prices.

Driving force

Every school child knows that the driving force of our economic system is competition.

If you work hard at your lessons, you’ll be able to secure a good job that allows you to save enough money to start your own business.

Freed from the burden of high taxes, you, a striver, can then invest your profits in a new railway line that exactly follows the course of an existing line and upon which you can run more efficient trains.

Over time, customers of the original train line will defect to your railway, and it will close down. This closure is a wonderful thing for society as it will allow you to take on all of its workers on zero hours contracts and thus leverage lower wages for your existing employees.

Hey Presto! Your railway has become even more efficient.

Not every schoolchild dreams of running their own railway, though.

Your buccaneering, entrepreneurial spirit might inspire you to start your own energy company.

Don’t be put off by the seemingly unsurmountable infrastructure challenges involved in developing a source of energy and delivering it to homes across the country. All that’s been done for you with public money.

Your role here is to devise a system of billing so opaque that your customers would require a PhD in statistics to work out whether or not they are being ripped off.

Be sure to include a pastel abstract of a tree at the top of their bills, along with a strapline saying something like ‘Good Nature – Delivering Green Gas to Children.’

Absurdity

Truss arrived at the very point when the cruel absurdity of Tory economics had finally allowed space for people like the RMT’s Mick Lynch to receive a fair hearing from the public.

In attempting to double down on its most ludicrous premise: prosperity for all can only be achieved if the rich get richer, she became the embodiment of an idea whose time had passed. From here on in, anybody suggesting the application of these policies will be met with a two-word response: ‘Liz Truss.’

So, dry your eyes babes, you’ll need them to comprehend the true horror of your situation.

Liz Truss is the new Arthur Scargill.