What are they thinking?
I do wonder what George Osborne thinks he is doing with economic strategy. It's possible, I suppose, that he thinks what he is doing at the moment will bring prosperity before the next General Election. He's not a particularly intelligent person, and he's not been well advised, so it's possible he thinks economic indicators are about to soar, and he'll be the hero of the country.
Another possibility is that he just wants to extract assets from the state, to the financial benefit of his interest group, and forget re-election. I think this is a bit more likely. 'Asset stripping' is a real life business activity and it may be that he seeks to asset strip the UK and then piss off and leave someone else to sort out the mess. It seems almost brutally nefarious, but it's possible I suppose.
The difference between the two will be revealed by his body language. If it is the former, he will be starting to get worried. If it is the latter then everything is going according to plan. I get a stronger impression he's thinking 'so long suckers' rather than 'welcome to the sunlit uplands of prosperity', but I do find both options a bit mind-boggling.
There are other possibilities though, and because those two straightforward narratives both seem so far-fetched I am thinking it must be something else, more woolly and hard to define. For example, I think it's possible he and Cameron work on the basis of short term emotional instincts. And his emotional compass is unlike most people's because of his very unusual upbringing. In this explanation he and Cameron have done well in life through an instinctive 'feel' for people, floating like a light ship without ballast. And if a strategy has worked well all your life, by the time you are in your forties that's more or less it. So half-baked economic and political bluster has got them both a long, long way, and that may be all they have got in the cupboard.
And because they haven't really developed abstract conceptual tools or deep principles, they may not really know what is happening around them. They may not be able to see more than a few weeks into the future. I find this possibility probably the most likely. And, like with George Bush, you think will they ever know what they have done?
Another possibility is that he just wants to extract assets from the state, to the financial benefit of his interest group, and forget re-election. I think this is a bit more likely. 'Asset stripping' is a real life business activity and it may be that he seeks to asset strip the UK and then piss off and leave someone else to sort out the mess. It seems almost brutally nefarious, but it's possible I suppose.
The difference between the two will be revealed by his body language. If it is the former, he will be starting to get worried. If it is the latter then everything is going according to plan. I get a stronger impression he's thinking 'so long suckers' rather than 'welcome to the sunlit uplands of prosperity', but I do find both options a bit mind-boggling.
There are other possibilities though, and because those two straightforward narratives both seem so far-fetched I am thinking it must be something else, more woolly and hard to define. For example, I think it's possible he and Cameron work on the basis of short term emotional instincts. And his emotional compass is unlike most people's because of his very unusual upbringing. In this explanation he and Cameron have done well in life through an instinctive 'feel' for people, floating like a light ship without ballast. And if a strategy has worked well all your life, by the time you are in your forties that's more or less it. So half-baked economic and political bluster has got them both a long, long way, and that may be all they have got in the cupboard.
And because they haven't really developed abstract conceptual tools or deep principles, they may not really know what is happening around them. They may not be able to see more than a few weeks into the future. I find this possibility probably the most likely. And, like with George Bush, you think will they ever know what they have done?