Political killing season

Between September and November, in the UK and the US, we are going to have the Political Killing Season. We may also have it elsewhere but I haven’t given it enough thought yet.

From September onwards the reality of Cuts will start to make itself felt. So far they have not. But when the new school year opens it will raise the curtain on a new and unbelievably brutal reality. Even September will be just the start. For so many people, politics remains vague right until its consequences punch them in the gut. Schools and children’s services are where the first punch will be felt.

In the UK this will focus attention, for the first time, on the looming spending review aka social services slaughter-house. In the US they will be heading for the November mid terms. At which Obama will be shown to be a powerless president. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a dig at his colour or any other kind of knuckle-dragging idiocy. I know he spoke of change but financially I haven’t seen any. Voters saw him as the First Black President and had high hopes. And he is the first black president of the US. And that means something important. But in his actions he was and is, in my opinion, not so much ‘the first black man’ to become President, but more just ‘the latest in a long tradition of rich men’ who are always the President. The poor listened to him and voted for him. But Obama listened to the bankers and he voted for them.

I think the vote that turned out for him personally will not be there at the mid terms. The democrates are very likely to lose both Houses and if they do, Obama will be more on his own than he is now.

His position is very weak. The Banking lobby is already on the attack, determined to reduce the Financial Regulation Bill into even more of a travesty than it already is. The Bank Lobby’s argument will be a simple one. Obama and his team have done so well, with our help, BUT the recovery is fragile and they must not waver now. They must resist the urgings of malcontents who want to over regulate the banks because this will harm Amercia. These people want to harm the banks purely to satisfy their own personal hatred of Free Enterprise. America, they will say, must ‘believe in itself’ and stimulate for growth.

And what can Obama say to this? Obama and his team have already heaped a mountain of debt on top of that which they inherited. They have saddled Americans with the largest debt in history – Trillion upon Trillion. Can he turn around now and say the policy they spent all those trillions on, is now no good? How can he say that? His opponents on Washington and Wall Street would slaughter him. Obama is a hostage to his policies so far. Like an innocent man who makes the mistake of agreeing to do a small favour for the Mafia. That innocent man is then their creature. Obama sold himself when he agreed to bail them out.

Come September or November, he can’t simply say, ‘Oops, actually stimulus spending and bank bail-outs are a bad idea because it is ruining public finances’. He may as well – ‘Sorry I shot the kids.’ Obama has to be seen to be consistent. That gives him little space for arguing with the bank lobby and their pet media mouth pieces.

Come November I think Obama will become the lamest of Lame Ducks. The Lamer he gets the lower his ratings will fall. There is no one so despised as a fallen hero. The financial lobby will be unopposed.

Without a strong President the people of America had better look to themselves for help because no one else is going to be looking out for them.

In the UK it is my opinion that the Liberal Democratic Party committed political suicide when it signed up with the Conseratives. The Conservaitves struck a deal which, regardless of what papers were signed, gives them almost all the cards and the Lib Dems hardly any. The Conservatives can and will push for whatever cuts they want. What can the Lib Dems say? Were they not agreed that the situation was and is serious and cuts have to be made or the nation will collpapse? Yes they did. So if they now complain, how easy will it be to paint them as exactly the weak and pathetic LibDems we all suspected they were – they talk tough but when it comes to doing the man’s job they are boys found wanting. That is just too easy to spin at Tory HQ and in the Tory Press.

The Lib Dems will be seen as and despised for being the Tory’s hired help for carrying out a their agenda. The LibDems own support will melt away. It already is. What will be left is what was always there in the LibDems, a rump of the nice,-but-still- dim wing of the conservative voting public. They will be assimliated into the Tories and there will be no Lib Dem party after this parliament. This more progressive elements will be orphaned.

Basically, those who have done and continue to do the bankers bidding and carry out the bankers policies will be sacraficed by those they are helping. It’s classic.