On June 28th 2017 the Tory party benches at the House of Commons celebrated after the Tory MPs teamed up with their newly-bribed DUP enablers to defeat an opposition move to end the public sector pay freeze.
Over the last few weeks the Tories repeatedly praised the emergency services: After the Manchester Arena bombing; after the London Bridge attack; and after the inferno at Grenfell tower.
And it's only days since the Tories found £1.5 billion in public money to end austerity in Northern Ireland as a bribe to ensure DUP support for continued austerity in England, Wales, and Scotland.
But when it came to putting their money where their mouth is and stopping the real terms cuts to emergency service workers' pay, the Tories are suddenly skinflint bastards again.
Anyone who knows a bit of rudimentary macroeconomics will understand how counterproductive it is to repress the wages of ordinary people with below inflation pay rises, whilst simultaneously distributing tens of billions in handouts to corporations and the mega-rich.
The reason that the Tory policy of crushing the wages of ordinary people in order to fund handouts for the tiny mega-rich minority is such a bad move is that ordinary people tend to spend the majority of any extra earnings in the economy, which creates economic demand, while the mega-rich are much more likely to either save any extra-income, or even extract it out of the UK economy altogether via dodgy offshore tax-dodger investments, which actually reduces demand (see my article on the Marginal Propensity to Consume).
It also hardly takes an economics genius to understand that repression of public sector wages for seven years has a downwards effect on private sector pay too, which is one of the main reasons that the UK has been suffering the joint worst wage slump in the developed world.
Continuing this economically destructive agenda of crushing the wages of our police, fire fighters, NHS staff and service personnel is no reason to cheer, but that's exactly what Tory MPs did when the result of the vote was announced.
The Tories have spent the last seven years repressing the incomes of our fantastic emergency service workers and hampering their abilities to to their jobs with savage budget cuts and facility closures, and when given the opportunity to stop this dreadful agenda, the Tories decided to give them another kicking, then cheer themselves for doing it.MPs vote to reject Labour's amendment to the Queen's speech calling for public sector pay cap to be lifted, by 323 votes to 309 pic.twitter.com/AXkNseH99p— Sky News (@SkyNews) June 28, 2017
It's absolutely sickening that 13.6 million people voted for this malicious, two-faced, and economically destructive Tory mob to continue wrecking our public services and imposing brutal real terms cuts on the wages of people who run towards danger to help others, rather than obeying the natural instinct to run away from it.
It's impossible to understand how Tory voters don't feel a deep sense of shame at seeing the Tories they voted into office continue their seven year long campaign of wage repression against the very same people they've repeatedly praised as heroes over the last few weeks.
It's only days since the Tories found £1.5 billion in public money to bribe the DUP into supporting their malicious government, so we now have absolute proof that the Tories can find the money to end austerity measures if they want to.
But ending austerity in Northern Ireland was a price they were willing to pay for their own political self-interest, and ending austerity for emergency service workers is a price they're unwilling to pay because they see no personal benefit in it for themselves.
Either Tory voters must be feeling a profound sense of shame and regret at enabling this disgusting self-serving Tory hypocrisy, or they don't because they actually agree with the ideologically driven Tory agenda of crushing the wages of our brave emergency service workers while they lavish ever more lucrative handouts on corporations and the mega-rich.
Let's hope that this latest display of outrageous Tory malice is enough to make a lot of people regret their decision to vote Tory, and swear not to make the same mistake again.
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