Greetings, my fellow members of the Anti-Growth Coalition! Well, I know the current (whoops, nearly said “interim”) prime minister Liz “Disas” Truss didn’t specifically single out the New European’s readers and contributors as denizens of that newly imagined foul cohort but I definitely got the feeling that we’re in there somewhere, didn’t you? As far as I can tell, the “Anti-Growth Coalition” consists of pretty much everyone except Ms Truss herself, some – but by no means all – of her parliamentary party, and the somewhere between 20 and 25% of the electorate who, according to unrelentingly brutal opinion polls, still find something to support in this increasingly shambolic vestigial administration. I’ve been a bit busy since Liz “Preposs” Truss’s address to the Conservative Party conference (I’m on tour, since you ask; dates at mitchbenn.com) so I haven’t really been able to gauge what effect the speech had on the party’s rapidly dissolving morale, but even at the time I got the feeling that the “Anti-Growth Coalition” wasn’t quite landing as a boo-line as emphatically as Ms Truss and her speechwriters (one imagines she does have speechwriters although you never know) might have hoped. I think the problem might be that simply repeating the word “growth” six or seven times in every sentence didn’t manage to anchor it in the minds of the listeners as the only thing worth working towards in a country that’s economically imploding AND literally up to its knees in its own effluent just now, and as such merely decrying one’s enemies as “anti-growth” doesn’t immediately establish them as The Bad Guys. So if the “Anti-Growth Coalition” doesn’t catch on as nice umbrella term for the enemies of the people, here are some alternatives that Ms Truss and her advisers might consider: Whether you’re drinking your morning coffee, evening tea, or something in between—this mug’s for you! It’s sturdy and glossy with a vivid print that’ll withstand the microwave and dishwasher. • Ceramic • 11 oz mug dimensions: 3.85″ (9.8 cm) in height, 3.35″ (8.5 cm) in diameter • 15 oz mug dimensions: 4.7″ (12 cm) in height, 3.35″ (8.5 cm) in diameter • Dishwasher and microwave safe • Blank product sourced from China
