View From The Side: Theresa May Has Discovered The Magic Money Tree

 
Commentary

The last few months have been boom time for idiots chatting about magic money trees. There’s been barely an interview gone by without some craggy faced political chancer banging on about enchanted cash foliage and the sad lack thereof. Our strong, stable Prime Minister Theresa May has herself appeared on camera to sadly lament the lack of Magic Money Trees. Oh, if only there were one!

Here she is responding to a nurse who hasn’t seen a pay rise in 8 years, telling her, so sorrowfully, that there isn’t a ‘magic money tree’.

And here’s Amber Rudd, standing in for strong, stable Theresa May when May bottled out of the leadership debates. A paragon of common sense; a hero for telling it straight; a firm-but-fair parent finally breaking it to a guileless child that Santa doesn’t exist, Rudd lets silly old muddle headed mugwump Jeremy know that the magic money tree just isn’t there.

 

“There’s no extra payment you don’t want to add…” she says “We have to stop thinking there’s a magic money tree… You have to be accountable Jeremy.”

To be fair, the Tories have been banging on about this lack of a Magic Money Tree (I think it’s earned itself capitalisation) for years now. Back in 2013 David Cameron – a strong competitor for the worst PM we’ve had for the last hundred years – was gently telling stupid Vince Cable that there’s no ‘magic money tree’ when Cable dared suggest that austerity was proving to be a total disaster for everyone other than Cam and his chums.

In short, everyone from aristocratic MPs with cash ferreted away in Panama to barely cognitive suburban fascists phoning in their feverish opinions to LBC have been united. They’ve shared a burning obsession: The Magic Money Tree and HOW IT DOES NOT EXIST.

So it’s a huge shock that today Theresa May has only gone and found it! She’s found the Money Tree! She’s literally conjured up one and a half billion quid out of thin fucking air! And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why she’s in charge. Because it turns out that if you want to desperately cling to power, and if the only way you could cling to power was to strike a deal with the headbanging Christian fundamentalists of the DUP, and if those headbangers turned out to be tenacious, stubborn terrorist-link-having bastards (surely not!) who had spent years battling far tougher opponents than you; a dithering vicars daughter up shit creek without a bible – then it turns out that everything you said about there being no magic money tree can dissipate into the ether like piss in a swimming pool.

For this is what has happened. The DUP have agreed to prop up Theresa May’s no-majority-having no hoper party with a confidence and supply arrangement, if, in exchange they receive an extra one billion pounds of funding (you'll find that sentence is best read in a Dr Evil voice). This money is to be pumped into Northern Ireland with the source of the funds being – according to one Tory today – 'we've got a strong economy'. in other words: The Magic Money Tree! Woo! You can read more informed stuff about the whole sordid matter here

 To be honest, NI probably needs the cash – the fact that the DUP have gone from never being covered in the UK media to coming under intense scrutiny tells you all you need to know about the amount of attention (and presumably funding) we’ve been giving to the area. But this whole sorry shambles highlights two big questions

  1. If money can be plucked from thin air in such a shamefully casually manner, then surely Corbyn’s various policies – that have been derided as ‘bribes’ or ‘sweets’- were actually totally feasible and apparently wouldn’t destroy the country. So why is it we don’t we do them again?
  2. If Theresa May collapsed this fast in giving the DUP a hefty pay check, wtf is going to happen with Brexit?

Will there be answers to these pressing questions? Will there fuck. All I can conclude is that May’s seen Cameron’s crack at worst PM of all time and fancied a shot at it. Keep going Tezza! You can do it yet!   

 

 

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