New Times,
New Thinking.

  1. Politics
8 October 2009

Sick-making quote of the week

George Osborne on solidarity

By Mehdi Hasan

We are all in this together.

I counted this phrase eight times, in some shape or form, in the shadow chancellor’s speech on Monday.

But, aside from echoing Troy and Gabriella in Disney’s High School Musical, is the nauseating phrase actually true?

How can teachers, nurses, careworkers, dinner ladies and cleaners — whose pay Gideon George Osborne plans to freeze and whose numbers he will undoubtedly cut — be in it “together” with a shadow cabinet (two-thirds of whom are millionaires, including Cameron and Osborne) and a bunch of bankers who continue to rake in multibillion-pound bonuses, even after helping to cause the worst financial crisis in more than half a century?

It makes me sick.

Give a gift subscription to the New Statesman this Christmas from just £49
Content from our partners
How to solve the teaching crisis
Pitching in to support grassroots football
Putting citizen experience at the heart of AI-driven public services