The ABC of Leftie politics

ABC: Anyone But the Conservatives.

When Labour is on the wane, the ABC tendency among the Guardian-reading classes cranks into action. They go into overdrive when election defeat is inevitable.

ABC party members tend to choke on their organic goji-berry juice at the very suggestion that the Conservative Party might have anything like sound economic thinking to offer, or indeed be electorally attractive in any way whatsoever. Their little Leftie brains are programmed to reject such concepts because everybody they know agrees that Tories are Bad People. Of course one has to speak to the occasional Tory at work but they're not the sort of people one would want at one's own spag bol suppers, obviously.

The ABC reflex shines out of Hutton's columns but one expects that because he is the very archetype of the ABC. He has no choice but to acknowledge that the Tories will win the next election (he'd look awfully silly if he didn't) but as a senior Leftie intellectual respected economist and former editor of the Observer (hahahahaha... yeah...) he shakes his huge head dolefully. He talks to bankers, don't you know, so he knows what they think about the dread prospect of a Conservative government. And here's a funny thing. These banking intimates of Hutton's all agree with him. Who'd have thought it?

The default response of the BBC (except Evan Davies who lives at least part of his life in the real world) to the worrying prospect of a Tory Treasury is to big up Liberal Democrat and Green economics spokesmen while nodding at the possibility of a Tory government in the interests of balance.

Hence the fashionable reverence for the chronically mistaken, highly reversible but conveniently forgetful Vince Cable. But cuddly old Vince is doin' it right merely by not being a Tory and by speaking in whole sentences. That's all the qualification a non-Labour Beeb economics interviewee needs.

That reminds me. The BBC-ABCs will make sure you see a lot of Caroline Lucas in the coming months so here is your FREE cut-out-and-keep Anti-Green filter. Keep it handy.