"The incoming Conservative government will face the worst inheritance almost anyone can remember. The only serious competition seems to be the Wilson government of 1974 and the Thatcher government of 1979. But each of those, in their different ways, had big advantages over the Cameron government of 2010. The combination of the worst recession since the 1920s; unemployment that will rise above four million unless something dramatic happens; public finances of the order of a banana republic; public spending on the scale of a soviet republic; the major industry of the economy (finance) crippled to the point of nationalisation; households burdened by ruinous debt; a war we absolutely must win but show little signs of doing so amidst widespread voter disillusionment with its value; a society ravaged by nihilism, sloth, adultery, divorce, irresponsibility, selfishness, promise-breaking and faithlessness on a truly epic scale; a political establishment that has no faith in itself or in the value of its ideals; an incoherent patchwork of overlapping legislatures in a constitution savaged beyond recognition; tension with our friends and partners in the European Union on the point of breaking out into open hostility - these and many other problems represent the backdrop to the 2010 General Election.And as the Country sinks into a mire of unrest and unemployment, the legacy of 13 years of Labour misrule, you can imagine the smirks on the faces of Blair, Mandelson and Brown.
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As unemployment rises above three million next year, and (barring something extraordinary) above four million over the following winter, the Conservative Party will be blamed. People will say that it's the spending cuts and the public sector redundancies that are the cause. There will be unprecedented social tensions associated with there being so, so many unemployed. Given the very low trust there is in politicians and the general scale of nihilism and social decay, the situation could become volatile - in an extreme case, in specific regions, even quasi-revolutionary (of the order of quasi-revolutionary union activities in the early 1970s, but probably not, on this occasion, at the instigation of unions). I have no idea how the Conservatives intend to deal with that - and, I think, neither does anyone in the Party."
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