One pictures Rachel Reeves, Chancellor of the Exchequer, surveying the smoking ruins of the British economy like a minor Roman emperor who has just discovered that the Visigoths are at the gates but the lions in the Colosseum are looking a bit peaky. What to do? Raise taxes again? Talk sternly about fiscal responsibility while borrowing like a sailor on shore leave? No, no. Far better to announce the Great British Summer Savings scheme—a title so cloyingly upbeat it sounds as if it were focus-grouped in a primary school sandpit. Cheaper theme park tickets. Free bus rides for the little ones. VAT slashed on children's meals and a merciful truce declared on the price of biscuits. Behold, the bread and circuses of our age, served with a side order of self-congratulation.
Christopher Hitchens, had he lived to witness this, might have observed that British politics has finally achieved the perfect synthesis of the nanny state and the fairground barker. Reeves, with the air of a particularly earnest comprehensive school deputy head who has just been promoted beyond her competence, declares that families deserve to "enjoy time together without worrying about the next bill." Quite so. One wonders whether she has noticed that the "next bill" in question is often the energy one, which—thanks to various global unpleasantnesses and domestic green enthusiasms—threatens to rise like a bad soufflé this summer. But never mind that, have a slightly cheaper ice cream at the zoo instead. The lions may be extinct in the wild, but at least the ticket price is down to 5% VAT.
This is not policy; it is performance art. It is the slimy lawyer in Jurassic Park—you remember the chap, the one who suggested a 'Coupon Day' as the dinosaurs began eating the tourists—reincarnated in a sensible suit and a red rosette. When the fences are down and the velociraptors of reality are loose (uncontrolled net migration that has turned large parts of the country into a demographic experiment no one voted for, housing shortages that make a sardine tin look spacious, energy costs that have households choosing between heating and eating), the bright idea is to hand out discount vouchers for the gift shop. "Don't mind the T. rex, kids—here's 15% off a plush stegosaurus!"
The numbers, such as they are, have the whiff of desperation about them. A temporary VAT cut here, some fiddled import tariffs on ketchup and marmalade there, free buses in August so the little darlings can be ferried about while their parents pretend everything is fine. All of it "up to businesses to pass on," which is politician-speak for "we've done our bit, now you sort it out, and if prices don't fall we'll blame profiteering." The hospitality sector is thrown a bone, no doubt because it employs people who might otherwise notice that their taxes are funding other things. Meanwhile, the real circus continues uninterrupted: small boat arrivals that mock the very notion of border control, a population growth driven almost entirely by immigration that has even the most Pollyanna-ish statisticians raising an eyebrow, and an energy policy that combines net zero zealotry with dependence on imported gas from volatile places.
One almost admires the chutzpah. While households brace for higher fuel prices at the pumps and winter bills that will once again test the limits of human endurance, Reeves is out there promising cheaper entry to soft play centres. It is as if Nero, instead of fiddling while Rome burned, had announced subsidised lyre lessons and a summer festival of toga discounts. "I recognise that what matters for families," she intones, "is not just getting by..." Quite. Getting by is for the little people. The government, meanwhile, will ensure they can queue for a slightly less extortionate ride on the dodgems while the NHS waiting lists stretch into the next parliament and the housing stock groans under the weight of unplanned demographic expansion. The Labour government presents itself, as ever, as the party of compassion. Yet compassion, in this context, looks suspiciously like distraction. Real wages have been squeezed, infrastructure creaks, cultural cohesion frays, and the public realm feels ever more like a strained pantomime in which the audience is too polite—or too exhausted—to boo.
Instead of addressing the fundamentals (energy security that doesn't rely on the kindness of sheikhs and wind turbines, immigration policy that distinguishes between national interest and open-house sentimentality), they offer the political equivalent of a children's lucky dip. Reach in, little voter, and pull out a slightly cheaper zoo ticket. Don't think about the elephants in the room. Or the people-smugglers. Or the bills. There is something peculiarly British about this blend of earnestness and evasion. We do love a summer scheme. We do love to pretend that a temporary fiscal tweak constitutes bold leadership. Reeves and her colleagues, cornered by events and their own previous pronouncements, have reached for the oldest trick in the authoritarian-lite playbook: when you cannot fix the important things, make the unimportant ones temporarily cheaper and call it a vision. Panem et circenses. Bread and circuses. Or, in modern translation: beans and bouncy castles.
One suspects even the Romans would have found it embarrassing. At least their circuses had gladiators. Ours have VAT reductions on family tickets to Legoland. The barbarians are not yet at the gates; many are already inside, courtesy of a Home Office that treats sovereignty as optional. The energy bills are climbing. The winter is coming, as they used to say in that other long-running saga of incompetent governance. But fear not, Britain. For one glorious summer, the Chancellor has ensured that your children can ride the bus for free.
Enjoy it while it lasts. The discount ends in September. The problems, one fears, will not.