Osborne's Zombified Spending Review

When his pallid figure rose to address the House just after lunch time, there was no sign of the urbane, erotic charm characteristic of the intelligent, blood-sucking undead. Instead, what we got was a cadaverous chancellor devoid of all thought, save that of the decaying dogma that animates his being. This spending review, this budget by another name marked a moment in this government's zombified shuffle toward ever greater political decrepitude.

This government is:

* Dysfunctional because there was nothing in there that would heat up the economy now. Instead, all of the measures - particularly those aimed at the public sector and those subsisting on social security - will continue to strip demand from the economy. So incoherent are the reasons for doing so it's difficult to see what their motive is beyond outright ideological distaste for this group of working people.

* Decadent because this is a government so stupid it believes its own spin. When our chinless wonders sit around the cabinet table for a backslapping session, they really do believe they've created squillions of private sector jobs. Never mind about a quarter of them are merely rebadged public sector workers transferred over to a private service provider, with more to come. Never mind that record numbers of the jobs created since 2010 are part-time, low waged and extremely precarious. This is a government caught by its own reflection. It obsessively admires its skillful cosmetic touches - a bit of blusher here, a dab of foundation there - while refusing to acknowledge the basic hideousness that lies beneath.

* Complacent because it sees no urgency to a situation of its own making. They don't care about unemployment or underemployment, nor the disproportionate hit taken by our poorest and most vulnerable, nor the half million Britons forced to get by with the support of soup kitchens food banks. That's why the measures announced that would boost the economy, such as large-scale infrastructure spending lie in the future beyond 2015.

* Clueless because, in the round, the totality of today's announcements make absolutely no rational sense from the standpoint of capital.

It remains a fair observation to call this bunch a government by millionaires. But so incompetent, so zombified are they that it's stretching it to even describe them as a government for millionaires.