A waking fantasy

A waking fantasy prompted late yesterday evening by the fairly middle of the road, steady as she goes, budget from the Tories.

For once our political class behaves honourably.

The Tories decide that they have probably lost the upcoming election anyway, so it is time for some bold choices. So Hunt delivers a budget which takes billions away from comfortable, not to say reasonably prosperous, older citizens like BH and myself, sitting on windfall gains on our houses and old-style defined benefit pensions, and gives them to the health and care services which badly need a huge injection of cash, not least to reduce the large differential between the higher paid and the lower paid, a differential in these two services which reflects the even bigger differential in the country at large.

Massive rebellion in the Tory ranks, MPs knowing that such prosperous, older citizens are their core vote, not that there are so many of them in the so-called red wall.

Starmer offers Labour votes to get the necessary legislation through.

An offer that Sunak declines, saying that such an important issue should go to the country forthwith. He agrees with Starmer that they will go to the country offering a clear choice. The Tories will offer more of what we have had for the last ten years. Labour will offer big increases in taxes, particularly on said older citizens, maybe throwing a wealth tax into the mix for good measure, and big increases in spending on government services generally, including defence.

Let the people choose!

At this point the fantasy stopped.

References

Reference 1: https://swahilitime.blogspot.com/. The source of the snap above, seemingly taken in a Chinese-run hospital in Zambia at the start of the pandemic. 8th February, 2020. Turned up by Bing on the search key 'health service in trouble'.