Yesterday, in an act of political necrophilia the Times commissioned Tebbit to write an opinion feature on the cuts and the looming conflict with public sector unions.
Tebbit’s analysis reads like a toxic mix of Taxpayer’s Alliance and Daily Mail propaganda delivered by a drunken Tory cod-philosophising at the Carlton Gentleman’s Club.
It makes grim reading indeed.
Tebbit’s first flight of fancy is that the Labour Party will be ‘egging on its trade union owners this winter for another attempt to bring down a government’.
His advice to the Con Dem leadership is to be ‘careful not to fight yesterday’s battles’ – by avoiding confrontation with refuse collectors and street sweepers – instead the ‘thousands of middle income middle class hard working staff doing jobs that are unnecessary or positively damaging’ are the local government workers who should be thrown on the scrapheap.
Most bizarre of all is Tebbit’s proposed selection criteria once the 90 day redundancy consultation periods get underway – ‘the government must be clear in its own collective mind, then make clear to the public and above all to public sector workers that the cuts will not be indiscriminate across the board but that they will fall on Guardian readers, not Mirror and Sun readers doing essential jobs’.
He’s not suggesting (yet) capital punishment for Morning Star readers employed in Civic Centres and Town Halls but its probably only a matter of time…
Bob Oram