Recently much time and energy in public discourse has been wasted obsessing over the cost of living. The cost of living always rises. Why the commentariat feels the need to browbeat our honourable, elected representatives into wasting oxygen on the subject is symptomatic of the malaise afflicting this otherwise great country.
Conservative MPs, and most especially ministers, have enough on their hands filling up their contact book for a life beyond politics without having to fret and furrow their brows over the cost of something as trivial as milk. Part time consultancy contracts paying £20,000 an hour do not just land at one’s feet. If ministers aren’t allowed to focus on the real reason they entered public service then it will be a sorry tale to tell once the ministerial car has gone back to the garage for the last time.
A measure of thanks can be given that while the cost of the pandemic is mentioned frequently, the total mismanagement of it and nod and wink to defrauding the public purse of tens of billions of pounds is only mentioned in dark corners, after dark. Indeed the Prime Minister and the Chancellor have overseen such a fiscal scandal that the very fact they are allowed to remain in post speaks to their political gigantism in modern Britannia where all others are pygmies.
The war in Ukraine is also much focused on. What a timely event that has been for a Prime Minister on his last political legs. While precious little of UK energy may be derived from Ukraine, all of the blame for the cost of living increases can be laid at Mr Putin’s door. He may have temporarily ceased funnelling millions to our elected representatives, purely out of charity, but now he provides a massive distraction from all of it. He is the Tory Party’s best friend indeed.
Still print media, and the BBC, continue to suffer myopia about heating or eating. It is hoped they’ll exhaust themselves and find another squirrel to chase soon. Can boredom keep one warm? If they don’t change topics we may soon find out!
The one thing for which we can all be truly thankful though is that Brexit is never mentioned in discussions over the cost of living. Not by the Government. Not by the BBC. Not by the official opposition, who it must be remembered did so much under their former leadership to usher in the new utopia wherein British workers rights were secured forever by depriving EU nationals of easy access to our labour market.
Let’s hope the old joke, I mentioned Brexit once but I think I got away with it, is never needed in 2022 in our fully sovereign country. And if it is the immediate riposte must be “Blitz Spirit!”. There is no worry, no ill, no qualm, no gut wrenching terror caused by watching a smart energy metre, that can’t be soothed by invoking a war fought long, long in the past.
