Opinion: 'We are going through same cycle of tired policies hoping for different results', writes Shaz Nawaz

I often listen to the Today programme on Radio 4.

This past Monday morning, I tuned in as I was getting ready to go to work and heard an acolyte of one of the Tory leadership candidates repeating the same phrase repeatedly when pushed by Nick Robinson about the cost-of-living crisis.

“We want to create a low tax, high wage economy”. People needing food banks? “Low tax, high wage economy”. People having to go to food banks to get warm this winter? “Low tax, high wage economy”.

And on it went. The man sounded programmed, as if he couldn’t deviate from the script otherwise someone would administer a sharp electric shock.

Tired policies

I heard this same mantra before; George Osborne said it when he was chancellor. It’s nothing new. We are going through the same cycle, of the same tired policies, hoping for different results.

The Tories back in the 1980’s had a formula: cut taxes, spending, and privatise.

Forty years on, they haven’t changed much; David Cameron added a sprinkle of social liberalism which has since been removed. No matter the circumstances, the formula is the same, cut taxes, spending, and privatise.

That is until the results are so terrible that they are forced to reverse course and the costs are reversing course are often at their highest. At what point do we get sick of this?

It’s clear that pursuing the same, stale formula isn’t delivering for all. We are in a situation in which people can’t afford to heat their homes or fuel their cars but BP is making record profits and utility executives are rewarding themselves handsomely.

Given this picture, what do Tories and their acolytes do? They break out old George Osborne tracks and replay the tune of “low tax and high wages”.

‘People not earning enough to pay bills’

Most people are rational. If they try to start a car and find that merely turning the key doesn’t work, they get under the hood and check the oil, ensure the battery is charged.

The engine of the British economy isn’t turning over. People are working hard but not earning enough to pay their bills. The Tories want to merely sit behind the wheel, keep turning their key and repeating the same phrases over and over again.

I have no faith in either of the Tory leadership candidates. They were or are members of the Cabinet and thus bear responsibility for our present predicament.

No real answers

All economies are subject to forces imposed by world events, but how we respond can mitigate the problems or make them worse.

When you have a robotic spokesperson with no real answers acting as if his mantra is an answer in and of itself, that indicates things are not going to improve.

They have no answers, because looking for answers would require taking a look at what the state does and its role in mitigation of circumstances.

But that would lead them down a path that they dare not go: they might have to face into the possibility that they are wrong.

And while lying in today’s Conservative Party is acceptable until the public notices, admitting error, without blaming someone else for that error, is totally taboo.

We need a change of government; it’s not just the personnel that need to go, but it’s the entire backwash of failed ideas that needs to be rinsed out. This holds true in Westminster and here in Peterborough. We need to break free from this hell of repetition.