20, 25, 40%, more? How much will ministers slash out of public expenditure budgets? A flurry of contradictory statements have been fed to the media over the past few days on this issue.
Of course, for the 18 millionaire ministers and all the politicians on 6-figure salaries (plus expenses and perks!) whose job is safe until 2015 at least (or so they think!), these are just abstract numbers.
But for the rest of us, these numbers mean job and wage cuts for hundreds of thousands of public sector workers, benefit cuts for millions of claimants and cuts in services which will affect the whole working class! And all this, for the sole purpose of channelling the "savings" made straight back into the coffers of the very same capitalists who caused the crisis and are responsible for the black hole in public finances!
The con-dem mouse that roared...
Of course, the Con-Dems' number game has more to do with politicking than with actual plans. But there is logic in this madness. Despite their cynical arrogance, Cameron-Clegg are hardly projecting the image of a "strong" government. Two dubiously-elected public school boys pooling together their upper-class insignificance, are not quite what is required for the class war that the capitalists want this government to wage against the working class!
So, like the mouse of the film, the Con-Dem coalition is trying hard to "roar", in the hope that the capitalists will take them seriously and that, at last, market speculators will stop threatening their government with bankruptcy. Just as they hope that their "roars" will get us to accept that we will have to pay dearly for the parasitic madness of the capitalists. Above all, they hope to impress on us that there is nothing we can do - and nothing we should do - against their dirty plans.
After all, if even the royals have to take a pay freeze and to cut their expenses by £3m, shouldn't workers keep quiet? Except that as far as we are concerned, the royals should have been taken off state benefit decades ago - and this would be a good time to expropriate them, once and for all!
Meanwhile, the Con-Dems' petty lies are being exposed one after the other. Education, they said, would be "ring-fenced" - but it turns out that the programme to repair and build schools is to be ended. Health was to be "ring-fenced" as well - but plans to build new hospitals are now cancelled!
On the other hand, when the police top guns object to cuts among the 4,000 personnel involved in looking for "terrorists" under our beds, ministers concede immediately. But they remain determined to spend billions breeding terrorism in Afghanistan by exposing the lives and limbs of 10,000 troops for nothing! Austerity for some, but not for others!
Their turn to pay will come
In fact, the Con-Dems have no more policies capable of dealing with the public deficit, than they have policies capable of dealing with the crisis itself. Like the capitalists, they are blind-folded by their adulation of the "market" and of its sacrosanct profit. They claim to be steering the ship of their government when, in fact, they are merely following the direction of the wind. And in the context of the present crisis, the wind tends to change direction very often and very quickly!
Their only policy is to yield to the pressure of their City masters, whichever way it is expressed. So they announce massive cuts with all the fanfare they possibly can, to keep financial speculators happy, only to be told off by the bosses' organisation, the CBI, for going over the top in cutting infrastructure projects. After all, over the past decades, juicy state contracts have been the main source of profits for a large number of bosses and they certainly won't allow the Con-Dems to deprive them of the state's golden eggs! So, the Con-Dems apologise profusely and, in order to be forgiven, they leak to the press that they are considering tightening the anti-strike laws - which the CBI has been clamouring for.
This pale government obviously believes that "roaring" will be enough to intimidate workers into submission. Of course, politicians see the working class through the looking class of union leaders who are so spineless that they do not even dare to tell the results of a strike ballot to their own members for fear of having to face a court - like the CWU leaders, who have just chosen to dump the votes of their 50,000 members at British Telecom.
But the fact that the anger of workers is still simmering for the time being, does not mean that the working class has lost its claws. When it finally wakes up and decides that enough is enough, the Con-Dem mouse and its capitalist masters will have to run - very fast!