What is the Tea Party? It’s an umbrella under which US political activists, supporters and politicians can sit, marking them as supporters of the Tea Party’s mission.

The mission, as printed, to campaign for lower taxes and a smaller state. It is, officially, concerned only with matters economic. In this regard it’s quite libertarian indeed – it leaves matters of ‘personal conscience’ to the individual, exactly where it should be.

Is that it? Not really. For the true significance you have to understand a bit about how US politics actually works.

The mechanism for political change is the US Open Primary system – very different from the British party system, where anyone – literally anyone – can use the Primary system to get themselves selected as either the GOP or Democratic candidate. Traditionally the ruling bodies of these two parties – the DNC and RNC – have been able to get ‘their guys’ in place without much difficulty.

So this is what Daily Kos and the Tea Party are all about – they’re about skipping the DNC and the RNC and talking directly to the grassroots registered voters, getting them involved with primaries and getting candidates in seats they actually want to vote for. Obama was the Grassroots guy. Hilary Clinton was the DNC’s choice. In the end the DNC did not get their way – Democrat voters did.

So, in many respects, just as the Democratic Party has been transformed by grassroots activism so the Tea Party seems to be having a similar effect on the GOP. There’s enough people involved with the Tea Party, or sympathetic to it, that it has a powerful effect on primaries.

My gut feeling on this – and that’s all it is – is that it really marks a continued polarisation of American Political Life. Grassroots movements don’t campaign for more moderation and compromise with the opposition – they demand the opposite. If both the GOP and the Democrat Party become entirely controlled by their respective grassroots then I think we can expect more extreme politicians of the kind we simply couldn’t even imagine here in the UK.

Is it a good thing? Well, it’s democratic and it’s empowering, but lost in the middle are the people who don’t think that you have to choose between Big Government/Small Church and Small Government/Big Church, and that’s when things start to get nausea inducing.

Much has been written and said about the Tea Party being ‘astroturf’. The true test of a Grassroots movement is whether or not it actually works. The Tea Party does – its supporters are very real, casting real votes and influencing real elections. It’s filled a niche that people wanted filling. The source doesn’t actually matter. It’s a real political movement and the fight against it has moved on from claims of ‘astroturf’ to general queries about the sanity of its candidates.

In reality, despite – or perhaps because of – the Tea Party’s focus entirely on tax and spending and indifference to everything else, it’s proven itself to be a handy vehicle for people with (what I consider to be) theocratic tendencies to bypass the GOP’s ruling body.

Part of me thinks that the rise of religion as an important part of the American Right Wing politician’s identity is a reaction to the general belief that liberal (in the British sense, not the American sense) economics are somehow “evil” and that it’s supporters lack morals. Certainly, that’s the problem faced by the British Coalition, who by merely taking spending levels back a few years are presented as representatives of Hell here on Earth, with no moral direction and no desire to achieve anything other than to make poor people suffer as much as possible.

By presenting themselves as people of strong faith and moral convictions this line of attack is somehow neutralised or circumvented. They just need to give people a reason to feel that voting for a particular candidate is a Good Thing To Do.

And that, really, is why the Tea Party ain’t my Cup of Tea. It needs one small change – that its candidates and politicians offer the people they will ultimately represent the same freedom of conscience that the Tea Party grants them, that they will never support Government interference in people’s private lives. That means letting people choose for themselves. It means not using the public money as a means to teach Christian propaganda to children, too.

Sadly that’s not going to happen. The Grassroots will see to it. The choice for Americans is between political and religious freedom OR economic freedom. They’re moving further and further away from the distinctly grassroots, non-mainstream dream of all three.

Ruthless, evil Capitalism. Under it, jobs exist to do useful productive work that absolutely needs doing. Companies employ the least number of people they can get away with in order to provide a specific service or goods, and they’ll always be trying to find ways to do the same job with fewer people.

Jobs themselves are a mixed blessing and a curse. In return for turning up at a specific time on specific days and doing a specific quantity of work, you get paid a fixed rate for that. You get the money no matter what. It is a direct trade of freedom for security.

Throw the public sector into the mix, where the ‘company’ can never go ‘bust’ (not strictly true though) and suddenly there’s the option to keep people working for the sheer sake of people continuing to have jobs, because it’s ‘nice’. No dirty competition. No dirty market forces. Just human beings loving and caring for each other.

But why should public sector workers be able to trade *my* freedom for their *their* security. That’s not part of the deal. You take my money, you take my freedom. Literally. Leave me living hand to mouth and my life choices are reduced to zero, and yet that’s exactly what the current burden of tax does to the vast majority of people whom all this tax is supposed to be in aid of.

You trade your own freedom and it’s none of my business, but my freedom? That I have a problem with.

Public sector jobs are at the mercy of the will of the public who pay for them. What we give we can take away, on a whim, for whatever reason we like. We don’t even need a reason. We’re paying for it, you’re ours, we own you. I’d rather we didn’t, but I’m democratically outvoted on that one. We like having National Butt-monkeys, apparently.

For this reason the public sector aren’t blessed – they’re cursed. Only the public sector can face redundancies and that be a cause of celebration for the people who pay for it. When Woolworths collapsed, people were universally dismayed by the news and worried about the staff. When a Quango gets axed, people jump for joy.

The lesson here isn’t that people should care more about the public sector. It’s that people shouldn’t work in the public sector if they don’t like the idea of having something much, much, much worse than market forces in control of their immediate future. At least competition’s fair. If you’re doing something people want, you’re going to survive. If you’re not, you won’t. In the public sector it’s about how strong your union is or how kindly disposed the public are to your department or your function. Usefulness or otherwise doesn’t come into it. That’s a damned way to live.

UPDATE: I was damned grumpy when I wrote this. I should have added, “which is why we tend to choose to treat the military and the police and others very, very nicely “)

Apparently 1 in 10 public sector jobs are going to go over the next five years. 500,000 out of a total of 6,000,000.

According to David Hughes at the Telegraph, writing about this back in July, the “natural wastage” in the public sector runs at 6-7% a year. That’s some 400 thousand people who leave of their own accord for whatever reason every single year. By that figure, 2 million people will have gone by the end of this Parliament, and the Coalition – those evil, evil fiends – intend to replace those lost 400,000 each year with only 300,000 fresh faced newbies.

This will of course provoke hysterical screeching, threats of crippling strikes and predictions of armageddon, pensioners starving to death sitting in their own filth, children forced to sweep chimneys and, the ultimate slap in the social democratic face, communities going un-reached out to.

“We need reaching out to!” the communities will cry, but Clegg, hooded and sinister will spit back: No. No more reaching out. You’ve been reached out to enough.

They, being the victims of this nightmare, will call this period the Great Butchering and, lo, Osborne shall be known as The Tiny Wee Butcher. “Cameron” will be a name whispered in hushed tones and babies, assuming babies are still born which, let’s face it, shouldn’t be taken for granted considering the Great Butchery to come, will no longer be called David. People already called David will change their names to Saddam, just to escape the terrible, terrible stigma of being associated with The Evil One.

Yes, dark times are indeed ahead. It’s been nice knowing you all. I’m going to go stick my head in a bucket and wait for Labour to come back in to save us all.

Mind you, the public sector, at the end of the parliament, will still 5.5 million strong. It will still be hoovering up a huge chunk of the country’s wealth for many, many decades to come. In fact, there’ll still be more public sector workers by the time the Coalition is through with their cuts than there were in 1997.

Once again the Coalition is caught looking like right bastards whilst, in reality, actually doing very little at all, except that we’ll now be paying more money for even less. Perhaps I really do need that bucket, after all.

Good old Alan Johnson. He’s proposed that an alternative to cutting spending is putting up taxes – well, duh, I mean, that is the alternative. But, don’t be worried about your bank balance: He doesn’t want to increase taxes on ordinary people.

That’s alright then. Hands up if you’re extraordinary? Anyone? There’s a bigger tax bill with your name written on it if you stick your hand up. No? Are you sure?

Ordinary. Normal. Only in the world of politics can someone boast about being ordinary, about how absolutely not-unusual they are, how completely lacking in any quality that makes them different from other people. In fact, only in the world of politics is it ever possible to be the same as other people at all. It’s not just appealing to the lowest common denominator – it’s appealing to a lowest common denominator that doesn’t actually exist. There is no normal. There is no ordinary. Everyone’s a freak. Being a freak, being weird – that’s as close to ‘normal’ as you can actually get.

Don’t they teach children that everyone’s different? Haven’t I been made to go on lots of ridiculous diversity training courses to hammer home the point that difference is good, that diversity makes us stronger?

I tend to believe it does, as it happens. (That doesn’t mean to say I support quota systems or affirmative action – the ‘problem’ of stereotyping and prejudice comes not regarding people as individuals. More collectivism is the last thing we need.) Labour, Alan Johnson’s party, swears blind that it does. They passed laws to that effect. Diversity is The Future. It is our best chance of survival – diversity and difference give us the best chance of finding the ideas and solutions that will get us through the problems round the corner.

It’s actually one of the rare point of agreement between myself and Labour, even if my personal creed dictates that it’s freedom for individuals to think for themselves and explore and push back boundaries that really matters.

So diversity is good, right? So why do these same politicians still invoke, “normal” as their highest selling point, their greatest virtue?

It’s almost like they’re saying one thing and doing another.

But, obviously, when Alan Johnson says “ordinary” what he’s really talking about is income and wealth. Diversity is great, but only on the stuff that doesn’t matter. The stuff that does substantively matter – income, wealth, intelligence, creativity, entrepreneurialism and the willingness and desire to take risks – these are differences to be crushed, fault lines to be exploited at the ballot box, social dividing lines for accumulating power.

It’s cynical and destructive, yes – and in my mind anti-humanity – but sadly when it comes to British politics such things are, well, quite ordinary.

If there’s one thing the last few days have taught me, it’s that it’s perfectly okay to cut public spending so long as:

• No-one loses their job
• No-one loses a ‘service’ or subsidy
• No-one has to pay more for something they previously got cheaper or for free
• It doesn’t cause any sort of short, medium or long term negative impact on the economy.

Just to be clear, that means it’s never, ever, ever okay to cut public spending. If you absolutely have to – say for example that spending is far beyond what you can claw back in tax… let’s call it a ‘deficit’… then what do you do?

Borrow more? It’s taxpayers that have to pay back the debt, with interest. Put taxes up again? The question becomes who should be taxed, and how do you get them to pay, and exactly how much can you extract from people before they actually protest?

It’s almost as if there’s…. wow… like no easy answers. Except there is an easy answer: Cut spending. At least, that would be an easy answer if it wasn’t some sort of social taboo to even considering the idea. Especially if the name of your party rhymes with “Rory”, in which case you’re especially not allowed to consider cuts, cos, you know, you’re doing it for fun because you’re evil.

But consider: Say I steal £1 off 100 people and give you the £100. Should I do it a second time? Apparently refusing to do it a second time is a greater crime, because I’m denying you £100 that you’re now expecting. The poor suckers who are losing the £1? It’s only £1 isn’t it? Hardly worth getting in a flap over.

If they knew how much you really really needed that money, they’d be happy to cough up, right?

See, whilst many (most of them apparently on Twitter) are psychologically able to ignore, or excuse, or basically discount altogether the taking money from people bit of public spending, there are some of us that just can’t.

One day it occurs to ask the question, “What exactly gives them the right to help themselves to whatever they want?” and the answer turns out to be because they can. Then you get a bit angry and frustrated, feel almost entirely helpless then, just to make things that little bit worse, everyone else in the world comes and slaps you in the face for even daring to consider such heretical notions.

The taking from me bit doesn’t count. I don’t matter. It’s the no longer giving bit that counts. Think about how people feel! Think about all the things they could do with that money, or that job, or learn from those people or achieve with the support of those others! Don’t you understand? Have you no feelings?

Apparently not. I just keep thinking, “But it’s not your money. How can you live with yourselves taking it?”

Then I wonder how we got into the sort of situation were people feel they have to take the money, that their need is moral justification enough. Is our economy really so pathetic and broken that people are reduced to state sponsored beggary? Perhaps it might be an idea to start thinking more about root causes and genuine solutions than ‘firefighting’ our woes away at the expense of the future.

N.B I’m not a Lib Dem or a Tory. Thank you.