Deep cuts to Britain’s welfare state lock in today. How angry are people likely to get? Or, to put the question differently, has the Coalition made the wrong people angry?
The key to the Poll Tax was the alliance which emerged between the poor and the middle class. Those old enough to remember will recall that alliance from the demonstrations of 1989-90.
They weren’t SWP rent-a-mob yelling about ‘dialectical materialism’ but ordinary people incensed by having to pay more to rotten local councils to have their bins emptied. Nurses, shop-workers, gas board clerks and swivel-eyed Trotskyites marched side by side. I remember it vividly.
The rest of Europe and the world looked on aghast as Britain rioted over garbage collection arrangements. Mrs Thatcher was brought down by a bin bag. It was a very British revolution. Everyone then went home and had a cup of tea.
It’s that alliance between the poor, the Trots, and the respectable, conservative-with-a-small-c, middle class which the coalition has most to fear. Have they managed to create it? Or will the poor be picked off as usual?
Has someone clever at Conservative Central Office calibrated the cuts to ensure that alliance does not emerge?
It all depends how the working poor and the working lower middle class react. And how they react depends on how hard the cuts hit them in the pocket. It boils down to household economics.
If the working poor and middle class make common cause with the unemployed and the disabled — if the Coalition has managed to create a Poll Tax type alliance — we’re in for a long hot Summer.
I suspect they have created just such an alliance. They’ve cut too deep. The Etonian millionaires in the cabinet, together with peripheral Etonian millionaires such as Boris Johnson, are out of touch, arrogant, lazy and irresponsible. If anyone can create a Poll Tax moment they’re the chaps to do it.
