Pasties, petrol and political posturing

Ed Milliband’s recent Malcolm-Tucker-ism in PMQ’s, which attacked the government’s spell of poor performances, has perfectly encapsulated a month of turmoil for the UK Government. Following the budget on 21 March, bad headlines were splashed across the front pages. With opinion polls showing the Coalition parties trailing massively, can the government recover from this ‘Omnishambles’?

Until the budget, polls suggested that voters had given the Conservatives the benefit of the doubt over their austerity drive. The electorate bought the Tory line that Labour were responsible for the slow growth and cuts, whilst the Lib Dems were punished for their pact with the Conservatives. Recent weeks have seen a dramatic turnaround in their fortunes, one which David Cameron is struggling to come back from.

Cutting the 50p tax rate was never going to have mass appeal; providing a tax break for the wealthiest in society whilst pushing cuts on the rest was always a recipe for disaster. However, what really riled the great British public about the budget was the introduction of VAT for all food sold above ‘ambient temperature’, which would mean our dear beloved Cornish pasty would be subject to 20% VAT for the first time.

When the Chancellor failed to remember the last time he bought a pasty from Greggs, ‘Pasty-gate’ ensued. The story went nuclear when the Prime Minister waded in to show that he was a man of the people, saying he has recently enjoyed a savoury from a fictitious Pasty outlet at Leeds station; it later emerged this shop had closed down several years ago.

Though this gaffe was embarrassing, it was minor compared to Cabinet Secretary Francis Maude’s response to the petrol crisis, when he suggested people ought to store petrol in jerry cans in case they couldn’t get fuel in the event of a tanker driver strike. Despite no strike on the horizon, people queued for hours to fill up their cars. One woman took the advice of the cabinet secretary and accidentally set herself on fire in her kitchen, suffering 40 percent burns.

Deeper analysis suggests that the government was trying to capitalise on a potential strike, hoping for a ‘Thatcher moment’: in the 1980s, Thatcher warned people to stockpile coal to negate the effects of a miner’s strike, and was able to come out trumps during the strike. If this is the case, it has massively backfired on the government.

Dodgy dealings have also come back to haunt the government, with the spectre of Cameron’s admission that he had ‘ridden Rebekah Brooks’ horse’ still imprinted on the nation’s metaphorical eyelids, a cash for access scandal was the nail in the coffin of his tattered personal reputation.

However, as if the ‘Cash4Cameron’ saga wasn’t enough, there have been calls for the Culture Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, to resign over contact between his office and News International during their bid to buy out BSkyB. After the government’s tirade against News International, the negative press the government is receiving may not come as such a surprise, and may even be revenge for the degrading process of the Leveson inquiry for frustrated journalists.

Whilst this has been a bad time for the government, it has been good for a select few. George Galloway, though much maligned for his unconvincing feline impression whilst a contestant on Big Brother, as well as his dealings with Saddam Hussein, won the former Labour ‘safe’ seat in the Bradford-West by-election for the Respect Party with a staggering 10,000 vote majority. Labour are now riding high in the polls, but the real test will come in the up-coming local elections in May. If Miliband fails to capitalise on the Coalition’s poor performance, then the chorus of voices for his resignation will crescendo.

The real winners, however, are UKIP, who have greatly benefited from the so called ‘Granny-tax’ that saw the freezing of the personal allowance for pensioners, and led to an exodus of Tory inclined older voters leading to UKIP polling third in many recent opinions polls, above the Lib Dems.

The most important news to date has been that the UK is now officially back in recession, plunging into the dreaded double-dip that we were assured would not materialise. With rising inflation and unemployment, experts and casual speculators alike have long suspected that the economy is in a poor state. A 0.2% contraction in the first three months of 2012 followed a shrinking of GDP by 0.3% in the last quarter of 2011 confirmed an already dire prognosis.

An air of incompetence has descended on Downing Street, and it looks unlikely to go anywhere soon.