Your Starter For Ten (to 15 percent cuts) AKA Same Old Tories Too

The temptation is to say 'this is where it starts...' but actually it started ages ago.

It started when Gordon's men got an itchy election trigger finger, swiftly followed by a squeaky political bum.

It started when the financial elite needed a new dialogue beyond Gordon's 'sustained growth that has removed boom and bust'; beyond Boris' 'Don't blame the bankers'; beyond Fred the braindeads 'blame me, I ate all the cakes'...

It started when New Labour realised through the Pavlovian masochism of the Ten Per Cent Tax Rate Removal Fiasco that it still had a base to protect, if little else.

There was a need for clear blue water. There was a need for a new dialogue.

...Once our poor benighted government, not so much a ship of fools as a pig in shit, had used its, for once useful, familiarity with global finance, to actually save our banking system (while the Tories tried to play nationalisation politics over Northern Rock and blame Gordon's alleged profligacy for global financial meltdown, which at best Brown was guilty of watching lazy-eyed from the sidelines while the longest consistent period of growth in post-war history gave his party a lengthy political blow job through two unpopular wars and a perhaps unique disconnect between manifesto pledges and Acts of Government - no student loans, no university fees... err whatever "...f**K that was good Gordon, over to you now, I'm off to make some SERIOUS MONEY"]

...De-railed momentarily by Expenses and the Telegraph's uniquely arrogant attempt to flush the toilet known as parliament [by themselves, principally] clean, bi-partisan, non-triangulated out of all linkage to reality, good, old-fashioned, British politics was quietly trying to make a comeback.

...it was time - Time for politics as usual:

So obligingly the Tories are going to stop playing 'New Labour Vintage 97' and get back to cutting propgrammes for the poor (and the middle classes)...

Well lets face it the Tories never represented the mass of the British people did they? But they are on occasion damn good at pretending to.

Still, sometimes they help to clarify things:

Tories to bin pledge to protect Sure Start cash

The Conservatives have announced that they are reneging on their pledge to protect early years scheme Sure Start from spending cuts if they are elected.

Speaking to Haymarket-published magazine, Regeneeration and Renewal Regeneration yesterday, Phillip Hammond, the shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, is reported as refusing to commit to a previous guarantee that the overall budget of the Labour government's flagship early years programme would be ring-fenced. "We will be looking at individual projects and workstreams, but we haven't made announcements about individual budgets yet," he said.
Last year, at the Tory Party conference, Oliver Letwin, chair of the party's policy review, said that Sure Start would continue under a Tory government at the same level to which Labour was committed (Regen.net, 1 October 2008). "Sure Start is a programme we value and one we intend to continue," he said. "It will not be cut back."

But now Hammond has signalled that the programme would be subject to the same scrutiny and possible ten to 15 per cent cuts subjected to all departments.

He also confirmed to the haymarket magazine that, as previously announced, the Tories would take part of Sure Start's budget to fund health visits to vulnerable families with newborn children.

A spokesman for childcare charity the Daycare Trust said: "We seriously hope that it is not official Conservative Party policy to remove Sure Start's ring-fenced funding. Sure Start has grown into a much needed and valued public service for families, and parents will rightly be angered if its funding is threatened."

Next stop funding the rights and localism agenda, or was that the 'right localism agenda' - lets just see...