The terminal decline of the Nanny state.

Like a profligate footballer’s wife, the nanny state never had quite enough Hermes Birkin bags. There was always one more, a new colour, a new design.

Nu-Labour purchases weren’t handbags, they were assumptions of responsibility. They have cost the country dearly.

Your ears stick out? No need to grow your hair long, no need to find a partner who finds ears like cauliflowers attractive. No need to pay a plastic surgeon. Nu-Labour would pay him for you and give you counselling, and pay you whilst you are out of work…It’s your right isn’t it, isn’t that what we have an NHS for?

Your cat is stuck up a tree? No need to find a ladder, no need to chat up your more agile neighbour, no need to worry about the cat out all night. Nu-Labour would send round your friendly fire brigade free of charge to rescue the cat. It’s your right isn’t it?

Don’t speak a word of English, can’t figure out which line is the amount you have to pay on your gas bill? No need to ask your brother who does speak English, no need to sit down with a dictionary. Nu-Labour would pay for your gas bill to be printed in Inuit, Urdu or Esperanto.

Can’t figure out how to use a computer? No need to read the instructions, why sweat over the ‘Word for Dummies’ edition. Nu-Labour would pay for you to go on a course to make it simple for you.

But now the credit cards have been cut up, and there can be no more spending, the vultures, fresh from gorging on Greece, are eyeing up the UKs debt mountain and feasting on our bonds.

It will have a curious effect, one that the electorate couldn’t achieve, of turning our Government into one that espouses Libertarian values. They will have no choice. They may label themselves Conservative or Lib-Dem at the moment; there may be talk of ‘our manifesto commitments’ but they will have no choice other than to butt out of our lives except for the essentials.

They have to make savage cuts. They cannot cut benefits, theoretically those on benefits are already teeting on the edge of starvation – though they might usefully cut the cost of supplying Sky TV to those households. Telling those on benefits that they must get out and find a job is not a realistic proposition in a recession – though I wonder why I could not find a single person at Stanstead airport who did not speak with an east European accent. Not the hostesses, not the tannoy announcers, not the coffee bar staff, not the cleaners. Are there no English unemployed in the region of Stanstead? Still, nothing the government can do now about the flood of hard working, bright and personable Europeans who have flooded into our country. Too late. The Lisbon treaty has been signed.

So no effective cuts in the unemployed or the benefit bill.

They could devalue our currency, and take something back from the conscientious that have saved for retirement – but it wouldn’t be enough to dent that debt mountain.

They can’t trim the NHS of things like treatment for cardiac arrest, or childbirth.

They could tax those who have held onto their jobs at a higher rate, but they have to be careful that they don’t tip the balance into unemployment.

They could try to cut public sector pay and benefits, but they know that a gleeful outgoing Nu-Labour cabal will do everything they can to encourage strikes and disruption to the country, so they are unlikely to try to claw too much back from that sector.

No, the only thing they can really do is to cut out the myriad ways in which the government has taken to thinking and acting on our behalf over things that we could do for ourselves.

We will have to get our own cat out of the tree, translate the gas bill unaided, and live with our sticky out ears. Grow vegetables in the back garden instead of spending money on patio heaters. The Lesbian drop in centre for one-eyed Somalian’s will have to go. No longer will an ambulance arrive to take you to hospital to get your toenails cut because you find the bus ‘difficult’, and you’re too fat to reach your toes. Buy some long handled sheers, or ask a friend.

The UK has grown fat and profligate, our expectations of what should be done for us by the government has grown exponentially since the end of the last war. The slightest hurdle in our lives and we scream for help. Entire stations full of firemen have been known to spend the day searching for one small kitten that has wedged itself behind the kitchen panelling – somebody has to pay for that, and we take it for granted that not only should it not be us, but it never crosses our mind to rip out the panelling ourselves if the cat bothers us that much.

We will have to take personal responsibility for ourselves. We may even have to rip out the panelling so that we can catch the cat for supper. Who knows how bad it will get? People have survived before without a Nanny state.

We’ll all be Libertarians by the time that debt is paid off. It doesn’t matter what label we liked to have when times were good.  That includes Cameron and Clegg.

That’s the death rattle of the Nanny state you can hear.