Change the names and number of parties and what Lenny says about the UK elections goes as well for the Dutch one a month later:
The 2010 general election will result in a victory for the nasty party, whoever wins. All three major parties, having supported the mammoth bank bailouts, stand for the deepest cuts in the public sector for over 50 years, far outstripping anything accomplished by Thatcher. Outdoing Thatcher in the cuts stakes is, in case the point passed you by, as nasty as can be. The chancellors’ debate – which, underscoring the poverty of alternatives, was won by the drab former Shell economist Vincent Cable – reinforced this quite starkly. There is only a difference of emphasis and timing between the parties, and these differences all sound eminently reasonable and plausible within the terms of the discussion – but they are largely technocratic differences with policy flavours attached.
All parties accept the reality that “we” need to drastically cut expenditure to pay for the bankers’ crisis. All parties accept we can’t really raise taxes on rich people high enough to do so, nor expect the banks to repay us, so it will be the workers who’ll have to pay, one way or another. All that’s left is quibbling about what to cut and how we are going to pay it.