THE TELEGRAPH: It's a new nation under the coaltion government – but be warned: the newly poor will need a voice, says Mary Riddell.
Tomorrow, with all due pomp and pageantry, the Queen will tell Parliament that her Government will exercise "freedom, fairness and responsibility". Her speech, rooted in 500 years of tradition, will herald the birth of a modern nation.
The legislative programme outlined by Her Majesty is the gateway to a Britain in which children play in streets uncluttered by CCTV cameras and superfluous immigrants. These pupils, heading to sumptuous schools set up by (non-working?) parents, may walk past JobCentre Plus branches packed with benefit scroungers being shoehorned into gainful employment. Any anti-social elements disturbing the civic calm will be swiftly dealt with by our newly-politicised police. What happy days.
I do not mean to parody the Con-Lib agenda. Scrapping ID cards, curbing the excesses of the surveillance state and electoral reform are welcome and overdue. Even so, the upbeat pitch of today's proceedings stands in stark contrast to yesterday's.
The £6.25 billion cuts outlined by George Osborne sounded modest and, in some cases, positive. We can all sign up to a bit of quangocide and an end to first-class travel by civil servants. But these are the surface grazes before tax cuts kick in and the axe falls on the 300,000 public sector jobs threatened by efforts to cut the £157 billion budget deficit.
As the age of austerity dawns, the government is unfurling two contradictory visions of Britain. One is of a settled country reclaiming equality and freedom. The other shows a future so divisive that its strictures may rupture our tacit social contract and threaten civic peace. Obviously, cuts are essential, and Labour profligacy has made them more so. But the Coalition, still in its honeymoon, is being allowed to draw a veil over the pain to come. >>> Mary Riddell | Monday, May 24, 2010
