Chapter 29

Britain Means Business

Eden

2050

It was another bloody bastard journey back home to England, Eden reflected, as his chauffeur-driven car finally pulled into the drive of his Surrey estate. He increasingly despaired of the state of his home country every time he was troubled to pay it a visit. He'd had to wait two days in Milan while flights to Heathrow were held up. Even private charters such as his were grounded as a result of the unexpected heavy snow that London's runways still couldn't cope with. And then the drive from the airport across the snowy Surrey countryside was a nightmare. You'd have thought that global warming would have done away with bad winters. For nine months of the year, the talk was all about the sea level rising or droughts and then for three months of the year there was the inevitable bad weather. Usually it was floods and storms. This year, it was heavy snow.

"They just don't get the gritters out in time," Eden told Ivan Eisenegger, the Leader of the Opposition, who was waiting for him in his Surrey home. "What kind of rubbish road maintenance is that? Where do my bloody taxes go?"

"Local government taxes pay for that," said Ivan. "The councils are all capped and they make whatever cuts they can. It hasn't snowed for six years so they haven't prepared for it."

"Is that something you lot will tackle when you get back into power again?"

"We want to move away from exorbitant tax demands and profligate public sector expenditure," said Ivan. "We've still not completely worked out how to hand road maintenance and repair over to the private sector without having to subsidise it. The public aren't sufficiently willing to shoulder the costs directly."

"There must be ways to keep the roads clear of snow and still reduce taxes," said Eden. "But you're right: the priority must be to keep taxes down. I trust that is what you intend to do after the next general election?"

"It's still a few months off and the result isn't yet in the bag."

"The polls are looking good. And you've got the whole media behind you..."

"The polls also say that it's more the unpopularity of the current Coalition than support for Conservative policies that will be critical to our success. We have to be careful what we say."

"I understand that," said Eden. "But when you are back in government, make sure that cutting taxes is your priority. Get the snouts of your interfering bureaucrats out of my business. That's all I ask. I've got discussions with my senior news editors tomorrow. What suggestions for news stories do you think I should make to them?"

Ivan looked around him at the two other opposition MPs who were also gathered together in Eden's smoking room. Eden was the only who was actually smoking and that was from a huge cigar imported from Cuba. The other MPs had sunk into the embrace of the huge leather armchairs and sipped from the wine that Theo, Eden's trusted servant, had poured out for them. At the same time, their fingers were tapping desultorily on the keyboards of their tablet computers.

"The Labour Coalition has been in power for a long time now," said Edmund Eaglecliffe MP. "A negative campaign that emphasises the mistakes and errors of the present government is surely the best approach."

"I rather like the tack taken by the Times when it attacks the menace of immigration," said Thomas Eastwick MP. "We need to take a firmer stand against asylum seekers and economic migrants. The country's swamped by them."

"We have to be careful, Tom," said Ivan. "Some voters might confuse an uncompromising immigration policy with racism or intolerance towards foreigners. The Times is right to highlight the burden on Britain's scarce resources resulting from there being so many claimants and jobseekers, but we don't want to frighten off nervous voters in ethnically diverse marginal constituencies."

"What are voters most concerned about?" asked Eden. "Isn't that what we should be focusing on?"

"It's the usual confused picture," said Edmund. "Sure, there are issues that appeal to core Conservative values such as a demand for lower taxes, fewer immigrants and disengagement from Brussels. However, there's also concern about flood defences, low wages and the high cost of fuel..."

"We can do something about the last," said Thomas. "It's mostly tax anyway."

"We can't go as far as some of the American states by introducing a fuel subsidy," said Edmund. "But we will have to present a coherent view on other issues, especially the environmental ones."

"I'm all in favour of being green as long as it doesn't cost a penny," said Eden. "I don't like the way these greens always find an argument to raise expenditure and revenue to combat climate change. It's just another excuse for high taxation. Any changes to the tax rate should only ever go one way. It should never increase."

"It's not going to be easy to implement lower taxation," said Ivan. "The national debt is cripplingly high and tax rates are lower than they've ever been."

"The nation's prosperity relies on the prosperity of its businesses," said Eden uncompromisingly. "What's to keep companies like mine from investing in low-tax business-friendly countries like Libya, Korea and America? The only talk I want to hear is about how to reduce taxes."

"We have to say something about the floods in Southern England," said Edmund. "There are too many Tory constituencies in the southern counties for us to ignore it."

"Don't expect any media outlet that I have shares in to print stories that suggest taxes will have to rise to pay for flood-defences," said Eden firmly. "This climate change theory is nothing more than a con anyway. The scientists have got it wrong. The interests of business take a higher priority than any nonsense about global warming. I mean, look at the weather outside. What kind of global warming is that?"

"It's bloody cold," agreed Ivan. "But I know where you're coming from, Edmund. When you're being interviewed by the BBC or one of those pinko newspapers like the Guardian or the Independent, you have to find something to say about flood-defences."

"How many Conservative voters read those papers or watch the BBC?" wondered Thomas. "Have you seen the BBC recently? It's bloody rubbish. They rely so much on computer graphics to disguise how shoddy their studios are that it looks like a computer game."

"The BBC isn't what it used to be," said Edmund. "It's been no threat to anyone ever since we scrapped the license fee. But it's still watched and trusted by more people than Fox News UK."

"It's your job to do something about that when you're in government," said Eden threateningly. "The BBC is a throwback to an age that should be dead and buried, along with independent trades unions, publicly funded education, and social security. I don't pay millions to the Conservative party only for you to pursue anti-business policies when you're in a position to do something about it."