8:30 Monday Morning

A terrible omen begins the day: I have misplaced my cornflower blue, and left my lilac (on the breakfast table), handkerchiefs and will have to settle for richer, darker, more garish shades. Mr Johnson’s additional bus provisions made it possible to reach Marylebone overground, so contributing, by my successful journey, to the eventual defeat of the Luddites who have stymied the flow of loyal workers ’round the nation’s heart.
              I wonder whether it would be legal (and, if not, whether it would be practical to make it legal) to introduce a form of “lifeblood” public service contract by which public sector workers who so chose could opt-out of union memberships, and vow not to work through their colleagues’ strikes, in return for incrementally higher pay & perks. Presumably the definitions involved would have to be subtle enough to uphold their fundamental right to strike, whilst preventing the barons from simply operation union strikes in a way that allowed “Lifeblood” workers to join them without breaching the special contracts.
             That appelation brings me to the second difficulty of the policy: portraying it for the move towards public-private solidarity that it is, rather than a matter of government ‘buying scabs’. Now, I do not understand where the term ‘scab’ comes from (perhaps a commentator could help me), but it seems to me that, by adopting this organic imagery, we may be able to invert the rhetoric of the Socialists. If a ‘scab’ is someone who prevents the capitalist parasite from bleeding his property back out to workers (and this explanation strikes me as somewhat tenuous), then to call our special contracts “Lifeblood Contracts” would be to emphasize the essential continuity and interdependence of the sectors. When Mammon is wounded, Leviathan does not feed and grow stronger, but is weakened too by the lack of a strong provider; when Leviathan is starved, Mammon is threatened, for its protector has no belly for the fight.
           The policy would need to be wrapped in the rhetoric of organic and established structure. London is the heart of the Kingdoms; the ‘public services’ their lifeblood, which carry and distribute the proceeds of growth, their meal. Just as it is the duty of every businessman and craftsman to use his gains for the sake of his neighbour, so it is the duty of every tube-driver to man the post the public purse had paid him to man. Economic policies of governments must be opposed at the ballot box, at the expense of the party that practised them: not in the streets and tunnels at the expense of fellow subjects.

16:45 – Not as many conference-goers seem interested in economics as ought to be, given our situation.

21:15

I attended a meeting with Mr David Gauke MP, Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (i.e. Grand High Taxman), Michael, Lord Forsyth, and a very-well-qualified and insightful professional economist. What struck me was the realisation that the rift in the Party between Whigs and Tories (or Thatcherites and Disraelians/Cameroons) has been greatly amplified by our pernicious mediums. Lord Forsyth gave a cut-and-dried Thatcherite warrior’s speech about cutting top rates of taxes to raies the yield and increase growth, and so benefit the poorest – and Mr Gauke did not object: rather, in stressing the priorities of this government, welfare reform, despite its expense, was wrapped up entirely and wholeheartedly with the need for cuts.
              Having said this, we shall have to see if Mr Cameron is, in the long term, upset enough with Dr Fox to consider bringing forward a repeal of the hunting ban to this Parliament (har-har).
            I have just eaten a near-perfect gammon steak in the Holiday Inn. The house red is less good. Matthew and I will be, on a certain diminutive brunette’s advice, retiring to a reception with Open Europe. I shall try and keep my mind open, also – which is not to say the same thing as that I will try to pay attention.