We Meet Again, Mr Bond

Ben Wildsmith

It’s a stretch to get too excited about ‘Budget Day’ in a society where the budget is subject to ratification by people who don’t vote for the government of the day.

Such plaudits as John Healey has received for his ‘breathing space’ effort yesterday have focused on his success in avoiding an adverse reaction from the bond market.

You must be as relieved as I am that the smooth operation of global debt extraction hasn’t been inconvenienced by anything your elected representatives might have dreamt up to improve your lives.

The gods have been appeased yet again, so the sun will continue to rise in the morning, albeit obscured by flooding deluges or at such intensity that your economy sausages self-barbecue. Panic over.

Economics has replaced organised religion in our society as the chief explanation for why you can’t have stuff that other people enjoy. Just as towering, glass banking temples have obscured cathedral spires in our city centres, so have the economists donned priestly robes to de-Latinise the gobbledegook reasoning behind your suffering, wave incense over the ‘hard-working’ faithful, and condemn indolent apostates.

Christmas is coming; make sure your credit score is up to scratch in St Peter’s ledger.

A democracy that is wholly signed up to a global pyramid scheme is bound to create frustration amongst those who failed to invest before it stopped paying out to newbies.

Now that there is virtually nothing left to pillage, we are instructed to pray for ‘growth’ as the elixir that will start money flowing again.

If you, personally, do more for less, the golden calf will recover from its malaise, and ships will appear on the horizon laden with Chinese tech, polyester flags, and bars of Dubai chocolate. All things bright and beautiful, the bond market made them all.

If, instead, you object to opening new oilfields because, selfishly, you were spooked by wildfires licking at your windows this summer, then the ships will be burned, your operation will be cancelled, and your pension devalued. Your god is an angry god.

There are exceptions, though. This god, like so many of His predecessors, is uncommonly fond of warfare. Another £10 billion ‘for Ukraine’, to be spent on products so perfectly disposable that they explode by design, is granted special dispensation.

If you’re sitting waiting for an overdue ambulance, this might seem a particularly mysterious way for priorities to be ordered, but you should reproach yourself. That money is to combat the devil, a position currently occupied by Vladimir Putin, and unless you want to be speaking Russian, just press harder on the wound and count yourself lucky.

Proper war

According to Wes Streeting, who has been promoted from health to whizz-bangs, we’ve only got 1,000 days before the proper war starts. Thank God that our adversaries are too dense to take advantage of us before we’ve re-armed and trained up our children for early deaths.

It’s often the way with evil adversaries: so stupid and weak, yet an immediate threat to our survival — well, immediately after we’ve accepted another round of punitive taxation, at any rate.

The absence of turbulence in the bond market is all you need to know about this budget. The managed decline of the UK will continue without challenge. Benefits weren’t cut yesterday, but the Chancellor reassured everyone that they would be soon.

He will achieve this in a ‘Labour way’, apparently, evidently believing that the Labour brand enjoys a reputation for compassion and prudence that I rarely hear echoed in my conversations. Perhaps I’m talking to the wrong people.

Austerity

So, austerity has, in theory at least, been deferred in return for shrunken ambition at home and grandiose bellicosity abroad.

Investments in arms companies and eventual reconstruction projects will continue to bear enough fruit that our creditors should let us keep the gas on this winter. Eventually, though, a reckoning will come because the gap between survival and ruin in this economy is shrinking with each trip to the petrol station.

Hopey, changey rhetoric and a £100 bung aren’t going to cover up that reality for long. Structural change will require a blasphemous reassertion of democracy over markets and inevitable social upheaval.

Yesterday’s budget suggests that Changed Changed New Labour is no more up for that than any of its previous incarnations.