If the economy needs sacrifices, it will be workers who are thrown to the wolves | Nick Cohen

It's a time of national emergency, the Tories tell us. But restraint is not a matter for everyone

We are back in the thieving world of Fred the Shred" Goodwin and Northern Rock. The sole difference from 2008 is that instead of the state expecting ordinary people to bail out failed banks, it is expecting them to take pay cuts to protect bosses' bonuses. The war against inflation in the 2020s, like the war against financial collapse in the noughties, must be fought by those least able to fight it.

Nowhere in the speeches of the prime minister, chancellor or governor of the Bank of England is there a hint that a national emergency demands equality of sacrifice. They do not repeat David Cameron's line that we're all in this together". As millions sink down, all they say is that it is their patriotic duty to protect the privileged by sinking deeper. Or, as a writer plucked from the Victorian age explained to Daily Telegraph readers last week, the rewards of the rich are natural and inevitable" but the clamour" of workers for pay rises is nothing but shameful opportunism".