My ferociously anti-Tory friend, Johann Hari, lobs another rhetorical grenade at the Etonian facade of the New Tories. Johann thinks Thatcherism is about to make a come-back:
The council here told people that if they took away services like this, there would be volunteers; if the state withered away, people would start to provide the services for each other. But nobody opened their home to Jane, or volunteered to feed Debbie, or started a new youth club on their own time and with their own money. The state retreated and the service collapsed. It's a rebranding trick. The Conservatives know that shutting down public services sounds cruel, while calling for volunteerism sounds kind but the effect is exactly the same. It's as if Marie Antoinette called in Max Clifford, and he told her to stop saying "Let them eat cake" and start saying: "Let them form a workers' co-operative to distribute cake on a voluntary basis."
Meanwhile, Britain's debt piles higher - because 13 years of Labour's reckless spending has neither solved the country's social problems nor stabilized the country's economy.