"We're All In This Together"

“We’re all in this together”, said George Osborne MP yesterday at the Tory Party conference (UK politics). Now, where have we heard that before? Ah yes, George W. said it about a year ago (just before he got drummed out of office).

No more individualism?

We might as well expect to hear it a lot more often in the coming years; it seems we’re no longer to be self-centred individuals - now that the bubble has burst. We must all reach into our pockets, tighten our belts, and feel part of some sort of caring, sharing, all-for-one and one-for-all (dare I say it) - community. (Now he tells us.)

When was the last time we were treated to so much camaraderie? Wasn’t it during World War II? After that it only lasted a couple of decades. (Thank Heaven for small mercies.)

Yuppies, and life on Eighties Earth

It wasn’t in the Eighties - the decade of yuppies, and “no such thing as Society”. What was George saying then? Well, whatever it was, as heir to a baronetcy he’d be saying it to a very exclusive audience. In 1984 when he was about thirteen he changed his name form Gideon to George. About that same time Margret Thatcher was destroying the very mining communities upon which Britain’s wealth was built. Margret Thatcher said “there’s no other way”. A chap called David Attenborough made a TV program called Life on Earth - as a demonstration of the many different ways life can be lived on this wonderfully diverse Planet.

The story of the markets

What about the Nineties; were his Tories advocating togetherness then? That would be the decade when he left his posh college in Oxford, married a Tory grandee’s daughter and got himself a job in Conservative Central Office. Was it there he learned the virtues of working towards the common weal? All we seemed to hear about then was laissez-faire, deregulation, and ‘leave it to the markets’. We all know how that story ends.

‘Brain Drain’ or cash drain?

Maybe it was at the beginning of this century. Perhaps he had a ‘Damascus Road Conversion’ as he watched New Labour continue with the policies his mentors and predecessors had put so ruthlessly into place - hamstrung and afraid to do anything that might upset the real powers-that-be, and fearful of suffering a similar fate to the Callaghan government of the late seventies. Was it a spirit of ‘we’re all in this together’ then, that shifted so much of the money supply out of the country to Swiss banks and tax havens - trying to pass it off as a ‘brain drain’ of irreplaceable but beleaguered genius and talent?  What was all that about then; ‘togetherness’ or ‘rats deserting a sinking ship’?