SORRY, BUT HAS THERE BEEN A COUP?

and other great unanswered questions of the Cameron era

By Steve Lowe & Alan McArthur

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Introduction

Why can’t the Tories agree on whether Britain is fucked and broken or not?

Did Sam Cam invent trip-hop?

Cleggmania: what were the highs? what were the lows?

Is there a link between the Big Society and the occult?

Is Cameron just Clarkson’s patsy?

Will they come back for the trees?

Should child cage-fighting be regulated?

What is the sociopolitical significance of Pippa Middleton’s buns?

Is the Coalition the best thing that could have happened for the Tories?

What was the greatest moment of the Coalition negotiations?

If even Mervyn King reckons it’s a stitch-up, isn’t it time to at least examine this theory?

How hard is David Cameron?

Does a Tory health adviser being caught telling private equity to ‘fill yer boots’ slightly give the game away on the NHS?

Is this the ‘greenest government ever’?

What is the socio-political significance of The King’s Speech?

When Cameron and Tony Blair speak on the phone, who hangs up?

What is it about Northerners that makes William Hague so comfortable?

What is it about having his best mate around that makes Liam Fox so comfortable?

Is this really a good time to start the National Wellbeing Project?

Will they at least make their fucking minds up about how often they’re going to empty the bins?

What can we learn from sharing Cameron’s personal journey?

The housing benefit cap: is it more like the ‘Highland Clearances’ (unnamed Tory minister) or ‘Kosovo-style ethnic cleansing’ (Boris Johnson)?

Is the Coalition’s bid to ‘woo women voters’ doomed and also a bit creepy?

David Laws: was he the best of us?

How could England’s 2018 World Cup bid fail?

Michael Gove: is he the worst of us?

Could RBS shares be the Coalition’s North Sea oil?

Will Cameron kill Clegg?

Did Louise Mensch kill Louise Bagshawe?

Why is the language of cuts so sexual (‘deep’, hard’, ‘sustained’, ‘structural’, etc.)?

Are many people’s attitudes to the cuts strangely redolent of very poor answers on Family Fortunes?

What is Steve Hilton?

What is worse for the economy: weddings or snow?

Is there a Tory Party Tea Party?

Is a degree worth £60,000?

What was Jim Davidson’s take on the Arab Spring?

Is there much work around for David Cameron looky-likeys?

What percentage of the UK population are millionaires?

What percentage of the Cabinet are millionaires?

What can you say about George Osborne that hasn’t already been said?

Is it wise to put Sir Toby Young in charge of all the schools?

So remind me, how many people voted Tory again?

What should we make of the fact that Cameron’s favourite painting is ‘Guernica’?

Where will it all end?

About the Authors

Copyright

About the Publisher

Introduction

October 2011

‘Is the Cameron government a coup?’ – this is the question under discussion here. This, and 44 other questions, orbiting this central question like satellites of love. Such as, ‘Will Cameron kill Clegg?’ and ‘Did Sam Cam invent trip-hop?’. You know, important stuff, like, ‘Is it wise to put Sir Toby Young in charge of all the schools?’, and ‘What is the socio-political significance of Pippa Middleton’s buns?’. Also, ‘Is there a link between The Big Society and the occult?’.

And, okay, there was an election (I’m not mad), but only around 1 in 4 eligible voters backed the Tories. And quite a lot of them were elderly and didn’t know what they were getting into. (Although quite a lot of them were elderly and were really into what they were getting into.) Anyway, somehow the Tories run the country now – enacting policies neither they nor their Liberal Democrat ‘partners’ stood on in the ‘election’.

The Lib Dems properly opposed swift deficit reduction, but soon got on the slash-and-burn bus after the Tories took them into a room and ‘showed them the figures.’ Christ, what went on in there? I’m sure senior Tories did not subject the Liberal Democrats to torture – as we know, the British establishment abhors torture, even on Liberal Democrats. But still.

Anyway, the Tories had to seize power because of the need for strong government in a time of national crisis. Where have we heard that sort of talk before? Since then, it’s all gone a bit hardcore: locking up students; rounding up gypsies; getting friends in the right wing media – i.e. the media – to smear any critical voices (like the BBC); and The Sun attacking anti-Tory bias in an episode of Basil Brush (this is not made up).

There’s the cliquish cronyism: getting bankers in to write banking laws; builders in to write planning laws; and ‘your mate’ in to run the Ministry of Defence.

There’s sending the army into schools: one of the new Orwellian-sounding Free Schools, which were rushed through under procedures usually reserved for counter-terrorism measures, is being run by ex-Army officers.

So, you can see the sources of my anxiety.

The war in Libya didn’t help; I kept hearing sentences on the radio with both the word ‘Cameron’ and the word ‘Gaddaffi’ in them, which created confusion, and also equivalence, inside my mind.

Then, of course, they found the hated dictator cowering in a storm drain with his engraved golden pistol – this is Gaddafi I’m talking about now.

‘Let the desert have him,’ they said, burying him in an unmarked grave (Gaddafi again, apparently).

And, okay, Cameron did not rise from the military – he worked for Carlton Television. But is PR for the telly not the very essence of some modern sort of war?

Mainly, though, it’s the privatisation of absolutely everything: the unelected regime privatising everything in the sort of orgy of (neo)liberalisation more usually associated with a military takeover or an invasion. The NHS, the schools, the forests… it’s like the post-Iraq War fire sale out there. Hit the punch-drunk populace before they know what’s, er, hit them. Then hit them afterwards, too. (Not forgetting the bit in the middle where they start to realise what’s hitting them.)

Add in Tory MPs like Nicholas Boles saying things like, ‘Chaotic . . . in our vocabulary, is a good thing’, as if he’s part of some European punk circus that does amazing things with petrol. And the Economist calling Britain ‘the West’s test tube’, and I am inclined to think everything’s gone a bit batshit.

So, has it? Has everything gone a bit batshit? Let us ask such burning questions of the day, and also some other questions.

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