The Conservatives' "Five Year Plan"

It's not often that you get to compare Conservatives to Communists, but the thing that David Cameron's Conservative government shares with Bolshevism is its love of the "Five Year Plan".
But theirs is no ordinary plan.

This theme of a "Five Year Plan" first became clear when the former key strategist, Steve Hilton, said that "Everything must have changed by 2015".
This coincides with my thoughts on my previous article "Boris Johnson for PM? I sense a cunning plan..." here, when I said that the key point about the "neo-liberal revolution" taking place at Number 10 was that by the time of the next election, the changes made by the government were meant to be practically irreversible, so it wouldn't matter who won the next election.

This is worth thinking about for a moment, because it explains some of the reckless thinking that the government has towards its own popularity. The key point is this: the Conservative government is privately indifferent to what happens after 2015 regarding who is in power, because if they succeed in their plan, by that point it won't matter who is in power. All that matters to them is that their agenda is completed by 2015, as explained here. The government is therefore behaving psychologically like a group of ideological "suicide terrorists" - making sure that they carry out their plan by 2015, come what may. Whatever happens after that is not important.

This fatalistic thinking strangely reminds me of another of my previous articles "From Gotham City to Gorky Park..." here, where I talked about the psychology of the Batman character "Bane" being similar to Lenin - both ideological warriors determined to carry out their plan, regardless of the consequences. "Bane" was determined to destroy Gotham City, even at the cost of his own life. The Conservatives in government in the UK seem to have developed a similar do-or-die mentality, a radicalism that is indifferent to democracy and the popular will.
The Conservatives' contempt for democracy is therefore plain to see - chillingly calculated, they are determined to revolutionise the UK as we know it, regardless of what the electorate might think of them. Indeed, they are so focussed on their goal that all that matters to them is completion of their goal, to ensure that nothing can unmake the "revolution" once it has been completed.

This anti-democratic radicalism, and their indifference to their own popularity, should be worrying at the very least. It is chilling to think that the Conservatives were voted into power only by a minority of the electorate, but were so determined to implement their revolution, their "Five Year Plan", that nothing else mattered - not respect for democracy, not respect for the the UK's future, not even their own popularity; nothing.

It is difficult to think of a contemporary political comparison to a government being run in this way. When put into this perspective of the "Five Year Plan", George Osborne's lack of concern at his own appallingly-construed Budget makes more sense. The same can said of Cameron's determination to ignore Osborne's incompetence, and vow to keep him in position till 2015. The same logic explains Cameron's lack of concern about the tit-for-tat with the LibDems over breaking of clauses in the Coalition Agreement, and the determination for the Coalition to endure until (or close to) 2015. When they know that they really have only five years to complete their goals, it makes them blind to criticism, and gives their radicalism an even greater sense of ruthless urgency.
This is because the wider plan is economic, social, and philosophical: other matters are trivial by comparison. The Coalition exists principally for their agreement over how to run the economy and redesign the social fabric of the UK, on which the LibDems are largely in agreement with the Conservatives over. As long as the core tenets of their Five-Year-Plan are adhered to and implemented, it doesn't matter what happens to them after 2015, because their "neo-liberal revolution" would have been achieved, regardless of whoever is power afterwards.

When they are not really that bothered about their own electoral prospects, what does that tell us about their attitude to government as an institution? Apart from the radicalism I mentioned that permeates their logic, the Conservatives by definition are not a "party of government" but a party against government. Echoing Ronald Reagan's mantra that "government isn't the solution to the problem; government is the problem", the Conservative plan is to replace public sector services by large-scale private sector companies wherever practically possible. These private sector behemoths (like G4S, Serco, and so on) then act as parasites on the public purse: feeding off government, government protecting the behemoths' financial solvency at all costs, while the behemoths get to keep any profits - allowing them to have their cake and eat it. This is the economics of fascism, as I've explained elsewhere.
The Conservatives are not that bothered about who governs after 2015 because they are not that interested in "government", only what they can help the private sector (and by extension, themselves) to get out of it. As the party of big business, their plan is to ensure that big business has the handle over the government of the UK, so that after 2015, the "government" has as little real power as possible. So, therefore, why would the Conservatives be bothered about being in charge of an effectively powerless institution, when the private sector oligarchy will be ones really in charge?
Besides, it would give the Conservatives the first call on all those plum jobs in the private sector "providers" that they had helped create...

This is the Conservative plan for 2015: the complete reshaping of the UK as we know it, so that by this point it is a paragon of "neo-liberal" virtue, a paradise for the financial sector and the corporate oligarchy, linked through patronage by the Conservatives themselves. Who cares who's in power after 2015, when the quiet  revolution that sustains those at the private sector hierarchy will have already been completed?

With the "neo-liberal revolution" achieved after completion of the Conservatives' "Five-Year Plan", democracy is irrelevant.