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.

It’s pumping the rich for more cash, which apparently everyone’s in favour of so this news should have welcomed. Except… of course it’s not. Let us deconstruct.

First, when people say “the rich” what they mean is, “those people richer than me.” People who aren’t bankers, for example, want people who are bankers to pay more tax. People with children want people without children to pay more tax.

People want every social problem in the world fixed by the Government, and they love – absolutely love – their free money that comes from some mystical, magical source. But – and this is an important but – they want someone else to pay. I mean, what’s the point of demanding the Government fixes something if they then go and make you pay for it? Doesn’t that defeat the point (the point being you want the Government to fix it and the Government to pay for it. I mean, it’s obvious isn’t it?)

Tax is crap. Paying tax is crap. That’s the truth. The gap between what people would like to pay versus what they actually pay is huge, and in that gap are thousands and thousands of public services, including “free” schools, “free” healthcare, and “free” money. That ‘gap’ is the bit that other people are supposed to pay.

Hmm. So, okay, let me declare an interest. I don’t have children. Now, now, I understand – as long as I’ve got a box to live in and occasional bread and water that’s all I strictly need. In fact, to be honest, that box starts to look like a bit of a luxury with the country’s budget deficit being as it is. My job in this world is to be ‘other people’ because, politically, I don’t have a leg to stand on. I’m healthy. I’m capable of earning a living. I don’t have anyone to look after so I’m in real danger of living a life of decadent, hedonistic pleasure while others have bravely sacrificed their adult lives to raise the next generation like all good citizens should.

Isn’t child benefit a God Given Right? People with children have to buy more presents at Christmas! People with children need to pay more to go on holiday! It’s not fair that they should have to shoulder this burden alone! I mean, not while there’s childless people with boxes that look suspiciously spacious for their needs.

The Tories mistake today has been failing to understand this. Perhaps they actually believe they’re allowed to make some of the richer people with children, in effect, pay more tax. I’m sure someone will explain where they’ve gone wrong and, no doubt, they’ll put things right soon.

One specific way they’ve gone wrong is that a couple could earn £87k and still claim child benefit because, technically, both people fall into the basic rate band, not the higher rate band. In other words, here’s “richer people than us” getting away with it built into it from the beginning. Presumably this is about avoiding the mind-boggling costs of turning Child Benefit into a proper means tested benefit, which is the main reason Child Benefit has been a universal freebie until now. That projected saving of £1 billion begins to look a lot less juicy.

At the core of this problem is the fact that the people affected already pay a huge pile of tax. They consider child benefit a sort of rebate. I don’t have a problem with people complaining about having to pay more money to the Government, but unless they’re also complaining about Government spending and how much tax they pay then really they’ve only got themselves to blame.

Labour has different rules governing its behaviour during periods of opposition and periods of government. When they’re not in Government suddenly things start looking a lot more democratic with elections and the like, while in government they empower the leader to take politically useful shortcuts. Their rules say that in opposition the Shadow Cabinet must be nominated and elected by the MPs, not merely appointed by the Leader.

However, for a vote to be valid, an MP must vote for 6 men and 6 women. Ugh. Here we go again. Labour has no qualms with positive discrimination – consider how successful the tokenisation of Diane Abbott was, how Labour created the illusion that women are TOTALLY allowed to run for the leadership, thus inspiring the next generation of women and girls who look forward to being humiliated themselves one day.

By successful, you should read “abject failure”, obviously.

But then, what did we expect? Not enough MPs actually wanted to nominate Diane to stand – it was only because Labour panicked and decided that getting her on the ballot would be a cheap and easy way of demonstrating their equal rights credentials. Yet it didn’t change the underlying reality: No-one really wanted Diane Abbott because she’s a pompous, passive-agressive arsehole.

Want proof? She whinged to Polly Toynbee during the campaign that the contest was unfairly stacked against her.  David Miliband’s campaign had hundreds of thousands of pounds and a team of over 90 people, whilst hers had 2 and a half people and £1,700. This, she says, is a failure of the rules to level the playing field. Wouldn’t it have been fairer for the party to fund their campaigns, perhaps, and provide the volunteers, perhaps, so that she wouldn’t disadvantaged by the fact that people didn’t actually want her to be leader?

What a role model! What a superstar!

Far from providing a shining beacon of ‘what’s possible’, Diane was turned into a freak show and a warning. She was given a leg up through tokenism and that’s all her candidacy was ever seen as. It made things worse.

Still, no-one ever accused Labour of learning from their mistakes. Another contest, another chance to prove how “equal” they really (really) think women are.

Great news for us, obviously. Bad news for Brown.

Ironically many Labour members and supporters love a soft, squishy, caring leader – especially one that consults and empowers them. They’re not exactly keen on these Totalitarian dictator leaders themselves, for obvious reasons, but the more oppressed, silenced and ignored they are, the better chance their leaders have of getting into power. It’s a mighty pickle, alright. That’s, perhaps, why they voted more for David. I mean, David, if nothing else, looks like he’s probably a mean, cynical bastard behind closed doors and perfectly capable of keeping Labour under control.

It’s not surprising that typical dreams of an incredible grassroots progressive movement amount to, in reality, “lots and lots of teenagers and students delivering leaflets and giving us money.”  Loyalty! Unity! Solidarity! These are all buzzwords for shut your mouth, do what you’re told and stop fucking things up for ‘everyone else’. That’s what Brown achieved (if not the ‘incredible grassroots movement’ part of the deal). He got everyone singing from the same book and everyone knew who was Boss Of Labour.

But, lo, it came to pass that Labour (well, the Unions) elected someone who, despite his Red Ed epitaph, is no wannabe Stalin. He’s cuddly. He’s soft. He cares about what you think and wants to nurture you into a squishy world of love and puppies.

The Labour Party is going to eat him alive. My prediction is that he’s not got the authority or the power to hold Labour together. Factions are going to start openly fighting with each other because, for the first time since the era of the TB-GBs, there’s no Clunking Fist keeping their more embarrassing and electorally disastrous tendencies in check.

Of course, I’d love to be wrong… but Socialism is a game for fearless ruthless hard-men with a book of “favours owed” and “secrets known”, not fresh faced newbies with hearts of gold and brains of putty.

The calculation – that after 5 years the deficit will be fixed and, at this point, there will be no excuse for further cuts, he’ll be able to argue that the Tories and Lib Dems are a bunch of bastards and that the public should vote for him so that he can grant public sector workers more money.

I heard the news in the company of a “wannabe” Labour member who is thrilled with this news. I am too. Lovely!

I don’t, if I’m honest, wish them well. If its members were to find themselves accidentally eaten by marauding rabid gerbils, I would not shed a tear. So, at 4am this morning, Mike Smithson of Political Betting decided to announce that he’s calling it for Ed Miliband and I felt quite relaxed and happy about that.

Allow me to explain:

See, Progressivism is about selling fantastic dreams  - work less, earn more, play more, become more attractive, be more admired by your peers, end hunger, end poverty, create world peace, abolish cancer, save the whales, save the planet all by simply voting once every few years and telling people, hey, I voted for cool. Musicians, actors, comedians… all manner of people who depend on being ‘in’ and ‘hip’ to make a living align themselves with progressive politics. Cos it’s cool. It’s one giant circle-jerk of ‘cool’.

That is, of course, only when the Progressive movement is led by someone cool superstar politicians – Clinton, Blair, Obama – then the circle-jerk actually works.

However when the leader is someone lacking in cool – Gore (the less charismatic and distinctly more bonkers Gore), Kerry or Gordon Brown – then there is no circle of cool, the Progressive Party languishes in failure and defeat. It’s not that people vote for Centre Right parties instead – they clearly don’t, because, after all, if you’re voting for cool then you’re not going to get that from the Conservatives or the Republicans – but they do stay at home instead, preferring to spend polling day listening to the hottest new band with their latest single, “Rupert Murdoch gave me AIDS”.

Selling Progressive dreams is a job for expert salesmen and saleswomen and so, to the point of this post, Ed Miliband is no cool superstar politician and so fantastic news for those who wish Labour… ill. He’s got a sort of cuddly, bubblegum innocence about him with his strangely nasal voice and chinless, feminine face which doesn’t really inspire the sort of feelings of terror and loathing that a winning Progressive Leader should inspire in someone like me. I only fear the ones that have a realistic chance of actually running the country.

But then, none of the others seem to have the mysterious X factor either. There’s no British Obama here, and for David Miliband the apple has fallen a long, long, long way from Blair’s tree.  It’s all so ho-hum.

I suppose the question is, am I right? Is it impossible for a Progressive party to win power without a political superstar leader? I put this same argument when Gordon Brown first became leader, stressing my belief that Gordon should never be able to win an election no matter what he did or said because he’s the wrong kind of leader for Progressives, and I was told by various cool people how wrong I was, that politics can’t be reduced to a simple question of teeth and hair and smiles.

Maybe I’m just not cool enough to understand.

In other words, if Labour’s achieved 80% of its goals in 13 years, then to get that last stubborn 20% would take another 52 years – assuming the Pareto Principle holds true.

65 years of Labour. Yikes.

Of course, this assumes that all problems are a simple question of time and money and that there are never any new problems created by devoting said time and money, and that there’s never any unintended consequences arising from solving said problems.

Nope, I think even with another 100 years Labour wouldn’t get that last 20%. There’s no ‘with just a bit more time it would have all been perfect’ here. They had a super majority, unbelievable public support until the Iraq War, a boom and seemingly infinite money coming from tax revenues. If something went wrong, who can they really blame?

My housemate, not as political as I am, was completely stunned by this speech. She said, “This is real? We can really have this?” and I feel the same. The full text of the speech is on the BBC’s website and it’s well worth reading. Particular highlights include:

Landmark legislation, from politicians who refused to sit back and do nothing while huge swathes of the population remained helpless against vested interests, who stood up for the freedom of the many, not the privilege of the few.

and…

As long as money plays such a big part in our politics, we are never going to curtail the tyranny of vested interests.

“Tyranny”, along with “betrayal” is another one of those words that only politicians ever say, but I can’t quite help myself. “Tyranny of vested interest” is music to my ears.

• Right to Life
• Prohibition of Torture
• Prohibition of Slavery and Forced Labour
• Right to Liberty and Security
• Right to a Fair Trial
• No Punishment without law
• Right to respect for private and family life
• Freedom of thought, conscience and religion
• Freedom of expression
• Freedom of assembly and association
• Right to marry
• Prohibition of Discrimination

In many respects the Human Rights Act is a fundamentally depressing law – one that was felt necessary because it catalogues the list of abuses of State power that can and do happen, but in some places it goes too far and in others not far enough.

What seems to have specifically upset Conservatives (and others) about the Human Rights Act is that it prevents the deportation of certain individuals who are likely to be murdered and tortured – even when those individuals are terrorists and show no regard for the Human Rights Act in so far as it applies to other human beings. I suspect the Prohibition of Discrimination and the Right to Education aren’t very popular either.

But the real fault-line here is jurisdiction. The Human Rights Act applies to everyone, irrespective of their legal status in the UK. The Conservative Bill of Rights would likely apply to British (or perhaps EU) citizens only, not foreign nationals.

Foreign nationals – including illegal immigrants, asylum seekers and people on temporary visas would have no protection from our Government at all. Murder, torture, punishment without law, unfair trials – even preventing them getting married – all these options suddenly become available to the Government of the day.

I would argue that the Conservatives need to get their alternative, the “Bill of Rights”, drafted and scrutinised and let us judge which is preferable. Truth is we don’t really know what they intend to replace it with, so we’re playing a wait and see game.

The Human Rights Act isn’t perfect and certainly isn’t the last word in protecting citizens from the Government, and perhaps a Bill of Rights could be an improvement, at least for British nationals… but Lib Dem MPs are never going to vote in favour – or even abstain – on anything that will allow the British Government to commit acts that will result in torture or murder, no matter how reprehensible the individuals in question might be.

But if anything could break up this coalition, this could be it. This here is an example of an unreconcilable difference, one where there’s no reasonable compromise. You can’t have a ‘bit’ of torture, or a ‘bit’ or murder, as far as I know.

ID Cards, Identity Register, Child Register and Next-Gen biometric passports? GONE

No Fingerprinting of Children without parental consent. SORTED

Extension of Freedom of Information Act. GOOD

A switch to Scottish model of DNA retention. AT LAST

Protection of right to trial by jury and right to non-violent protest. AWESOME

Reform of the libel laws to protect freedom of speech. SUPERB

And more. Seriously, there’s MORE. And this doesn’t include what might end up in the Great Repeal/Freedom Bill (HINT: Digital Economy Act three strikes, site blocking).

This is extremely promising and marks the first time our Government has done anything that I’ve gone, “Wow! Cool!” at for… well.. over ten years, I guess. I’m genuinely surprised and amazed and hope that this shows a willingness to be bold in this area.

The bad for me is the section on the ‘Green’ economy stuff, which represents quite an ambitious program of economic planning (irrespective of the perceived need to do so.) Will be interested to see if this gets the same focus and attention.

Back to good we have the end of child detention in immigration centres. On the bad side we appear to have merged the Lib Dem and the Tory policy on dealing with illegal immigrants. If you’ll recall, the Lib Dems intended to find some of the illegal immigrants and give them an amnesty to stay. The Tories wanted to deport them but can’t actually find them. The new policy is find them and deport them. Compromise, eh? Wonderful.

More on this as it sinks in and the actual behaviour of the Government becomes apparent… but put it this way: I’m a bit worried about the odds of getting pieces onto Liberal Central at the Guardian if the Coalition carries on like this. My career as a semi-professional writer may be killed off before it’s started.

Damn.