Free Beer Tomorrow

I don’t know about you, but I’m just about fed-up to the back teeth with tomorrow.

By that, I don’t mean the very specific tomorrow, even if the temperature is due to head south again, nor even the more generic Monday morning feeling.

No, I’m referring to the politicians’ tomorrow. You know, the one that never comes.

It is party conference season and so far we’ve heard from Labour and the Lib Dems, while this week it is the turn of the Conservatives.

The thing they have in common is the usual aspirational guff that politicians mistake for statesmanship. New bargains, new deals, a vision of a fairer Britain etc, politicians like to look to the future because it means they can ignore the messy present.

But have you ever known a politician’s tomorrow ever come to pass? Wouldn’t it be nice if one of them would stand up and say ‘today is the tomorrow that I promised you yesterday’ or something like that?

Taking responsibility for the current state of affairs is dangerous, of course. You can only sidestep it by blaming the previous administration for so long and it is much safer to gaze at the horizon and tell us how great life will be once their policies have finally kicked in.

And yet they are never held to account for the delivery of the said tomorrow because when that day dawns, they’ve moved on to more lucrative work –city directorships, publishing deals and consultancy, or an ermine robe if they’re not too bright.

It’s time we told Nostradavus, Mystic Ed and Old Mother Cleggton to shut up about tomorrow and tell us instead about today and the part they played in getting us into this mess in the first place.