Is the UK opposition trying to lose the next election?

British expats in Arabia are bemused by the recent statements from HM Opposition leader David Cameron and his team.

Can you really expect to win an election by promising austerity, tax hikes and public spending cuts? This might be interpreted as an admirable admission of reality and a new vision for the future. But turkeys do not usually vote for Christmas.

National embarrassment

Blundering Brown might be an international embarrassment but there is still the heart of an Old Labour politician beating. He has immediately contrasted his own optimism about the outlook for Britain with the opposition’s pessimism.

Will anybody believe him after his long record of telling lies about the future prospects of the UK economy? Will the man who brought you the house price crash (but only after he had made it to No10) now be the man with a plan?

The opposition conservatives are gambling that the British public is not that stupid. But hey another great populist politician once said that you should never underestimate the stupidity of the electorate.

Perhaps Gordon Brown has also read Hitler’s book ‘Mein Kampf’ and is taking a leaf out of his book. His has borrowed bankrupt ideas from just about everybody else.

Austerity program

Then again perhaps the Conservatives feel that life in government is going to be so awful that they might as well leave it to dear old Gordon. For having stacked up national debt to the roof and got the country living way beyond its means, perhaps it would be rough justice to allow him to bear the pain and suffering of once again having to go back on his word and undo some of the problems that he has created.

It is a dismal dilemma for the UK as there is no painless way out of debt. You can trust Gordon to try to inflate his way out but in this path lies the road to economic ruin.

At least the Conservatives have the only policy that will actually work in the long-run, albeit with considerable damage to the public sector and higher unemployment. But whether the British electorate will actually vote for it is quite another thing, and this could be a massive mistake on the Conservatives part, if they actually want the job.