selma, soweto, piccadilly circus

Oh dear:

Let's do a quick comparison of grievances:

Suffragettes: One half of the population not being allowed the same basic rights as the other half, including the right to vote, on grounds of gender.

Civil Rights: Citizens being denied basic rights and systematically discriminated against at every level of society, on grounds of race.

Apartheid: Brutal discrimination, forced segregation and denial of basic rights on grounds of race.

26 March/UK Uncut: (in Ed Miliband's own terms): a cut in government spending that is sooner and slightly larger than is prudent.

This isn't just risible, it's actually infuriating.

Alex Massie has more.

Comments

[Tony]

I'm a Tory, so all that follows is infused with incredibly curdled bias, but I find it extremely distasteful and entirely lacking in perspective and I think Ed Miliband's behaviour has been opportunistic, dishonest and generally gittish.

There's a case to be made the Coalition is wrong and that Alastair Darling is right. There's even a case to be made that Ed Balls is right (although anyone who wants to drone on about Keynes needs to address Labour's massive defecit spending during the boom years, which serves to undermine Balls' case). But the line taken by the current protest (at least its main movers and shakers) is ludicrous and economically illiterate and to promote the notion that is compares to a genuine civil rights movement is morally disreputable and historically tone deaf. See also (though I'm sure you already have) Bagehot's excellent coverage of the anti-cuts movement

When Tory cuts are in place, public spending as a proportion of GDP will be higher than it was at the end of Tony Blair's first term and will only be slightly less than it was during the period 2003-2007. We keep hearing that bus routes, bin collections and local libraries are all being driven to the wall, but in many cases councils are being made to cut spending back to 2008 levels. That's 2008. Yes, there's a case to be made that this is happening during hard times rather than a boom and that makes all the difference. But that at best validates Darling, not the protesters who seem to think we can just spend 47-50% of GDP on the public sector forever by soaking the private sector.

[Tony]

Having been highly critical of both the marchers and Ed Miliband and having praised Bagehot's work on the anti-cuts movement, I think it's only fair to link to this, which is a relatively sympathetic treatment:

http://www.economist.com/blogs/bagehot/2011/03/britain_and_public_spending_cuts