Ken Clarke Pours Cold Water on Osborne's "Economic Recovery"

Ken Clarke, free at last to express his real opinions, has lambasted Osborne's so-called "economic recovery". Speaking to the "Guardian" he described the recent slight economic improvement as nothing more than "a bit of cyclical upswing" while Britain's economy is "fragile, vulnerable to shocks, and still lacks the strong productive base necessary to compete long-term in global markets". "It's not firmly enough rooted on a proper balance between manufacturing and a wide range of services and financial services," he says. "I mean, we have this mystery of why we can't get productivity to start rising again." Describing Osborne's policy as merely reviving the "ludicrous cycle of house price booms," he has, in effect, trashed the Tory party's entire economic policy. Not that there is much to trash since their policy consists entirely of erecting a solid wall of economic privilege between themselves and the rest of the country and then pulling up the drawbridge. Ken Clarke, it must be said, is the last of a dying breed within his party - a "one nation Tory" who believes that a government should govern in the interests of the whole country and not in their own selfish interests. As such Ken Clarke is a bit of a dinosaur as the "modernising" Tories seek to turn the clock back to the 18th century and grab what they can while they can. Pity he didn't say all this when he was in a position to make some sort of difference.

Ken Clarke: "Oops, We Did It Again!"

Ken Clarke, the Hermann Goering of the Coalition government, has been explaining why the Tories have morphed, once again, into a fairly convincing copy of the Nazi party. Claiming that the party has "accidently drifted" to the right because the facist element are "acting up again" he has taken the Britney Spears, "Oops, I did it again", stance. Maintaining that Cameron is a centre-right politician and fundamentally a decent man, he suggests that the PM is being forced into acts of sheer evil because he's being bullied by the right of the party. We now have a troika of excuses for the sheer brutality of this government - austerity, despite the largely self-inflicted nature of the recession, is "unavoidable" - the benefit system is "too generous" and allows the lazy and feckless to lead film star lifestyles - Cameron is a nice man forced to do nasty things because he's too weak and/or too stupid to do anything else. However, none of this explains why Cameron and his entire party, right, left or centre are congenital liars whose selfishness and greed know no bounds. We asked cuddly Ken for his view on that embarassing fact; "It's not our fault. Many in the party were born into privileged backgrounds, which is a great disability when you rely on the votes of ordinary people to keep you on the gravy train. Most of us struggle to communicate with the peasants because we know absolutely nothing about them or their lives and, of course, we have to fake giving a damn - at least for the duration of the election. Everyone knows that greed is good and, to indulge our insatiable need to spend money that doesn't belong to us, we are left with no choice but to lie. You should all feel sorry for us."

Tories Fear That They've Been Rumbled.

Ken Clarke, the jovial Herman Goering-like figure in the Tory party, has warned Cameron that dropping him from the cabinet would "re-toxify the party." In fact, as their policies amply demonstrate, the Tory party has remained as toxic as it always was. Having assured us all that "we're all in this together" they have gone out of their way to attack every vulnerable person in the country in order to make them pay for the mistakes of their rich pals. They have thought nothing about villifying sick and disabled people and exposing them to abuse from the more vicious elements in our society, nor have they shrunk from blaming the victims of their wicked and deeply selfish policies. That the Tory party as a whole is no better than even the most pessimistic predictions is amply shown by a simple statistic - that Tory councils have, since 2010, sold off six times as many school playing fields than councils controlled by other parties. Nasty, sleazy, two-faced, unutterably stupid and congenitally unable to tell the truth, the party is also tearing itself apart in the continuing re-run of its vicious history. Tory backbenchers, having already revolted to stop electoral reform, have now decided to scratch the eyes out of their leader in two new pollicy areas - protecting the green belt and rail fare hikes. At first sight these might appear to be good reasons to revolt - everyone agrees that the green belt needs protecting and everyone agrees that rail fares are already too high. But, when the motives of these revolting Tories are examined, their opposition is seen to be rather less noble. Their objections to building in the green belts is based on protecting their voters in rural constituencies and fears that their property values might suffer despite the need for new affordable housing, while their objections to a hike in rail fares is based on fears for their waifer-thin majorities in marginal constituencies outside London. As is usual in the Tory party their fears and objections all turn out to spring from selfish motives. Ken Clarke has no need to worry about the "de-toxification" of his party. Like any other poisonous compound rebranding it can never hide its essentially deadly and thoroughly unpleasant nature.