With Britain still struggling with the catastrophic financial consequences of the Blair/Brown years (although Blair himself is doing very nicely, as this story reminds us), it seems amazing that the Tories are not doing better in the polls. Part of the reason is that the Conservatives are still obsessed with showing that they are not the “nasty” party, a battle that was won some time ago. As a result, they are refusing to address issues such as immigration that might, you know, actually resonate with voters.

That’s depressing, dim and thoroughly irresponsible. It’s also meant that Brits at least have to contemplate the possibility of a “hung parliament” (a parliament where no one party has an overall majority) in which the center-left Liberal Democrats hold the balance of power. The Daily Telegraph’s Jeff Randall has been looking at what this might mean. The answer is nothing good. Then again, sometimes electorates get the governments they deserve. Randall explains:

This week, an Ipsos Mori poll found that 50 per cent of the public believe there is no need to cut services in order to reduce the national deficit. Worse still, 75 per cent believe that “efficiencies” alone can deliver all the required savings. This reveals a level of sophistication and understanding barely more advanced than the get-rich-quick dreams of South Pacific cargo cults…
…all of what the Lib Dems have to say about Britain’s disastrous public finances – a £170-billion-a-year deficit (13 per cent of our GDP) – is contained in just nine sentences of vacuity. Compare and contrast with the party’s 21-point action plan under the heading of Ethnic Minorities, or its gushing approval of the Lisbon Treaty (a disgraceful sell-out of British sovereignty).
Vince Cable, the Lib Dems’ avuncular spokesman on economic matters, is widely regarded as having had a good recession. To his credit, he was the first senior British politician to flag up the looming danger of consumer debt. He even included a line about it in the party’s 2005 election manifesto. But if this Cambridge-educated economist is so clever, so competent, so full of integrity, why is he not putting meat on the bones of Mr Clegg’s promise in last week’s Spectator magazine that the Lib Dems will fill a structural gap in Britain’s finances purely with “spending cuts”? Vince, where’s the beef? I think we know the answer. In keeping with his rivals, Alistair Darling and George Osborne, Mr Cable fears telling us the truth. He dreads the impact it will have on an infantilised electorate, trained by Labour to believe that it can keep demanding more and more, because there will always be another fool to foot the bill. Very soon cruel reality will smash this illusion.