In his song Step Right Up, the artist Tom Waits has some wisdom for the parties entering government, especially related to their management of the public finances. Waits tells us “the large print giveth, the small print taketh away”. The large print of the programme for government will emphasize the measures to deal with the crisis, particularly the greener measures, in order to sell the putative programme to a skeptical Green party membership. The small print, so small it is perhaps invisible, at the end of every line of the programme is ‘subject to available resources’. The tax base of…

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