Tuesday, April 28, 2009

In Office but not in Power

I was struck by the similarity of several stories in today's Telegraph. "Jaquie Smith, the Home Secretary, yesterday scrapped plans for a national computer database" and "Jack Straw yesterday shelved plans to build three 'Titan' super jails" and "Gordon Brown was last night forced to drop controversial proposals to introduce a daily 'attendance allowance' for MPs who turn up in Parliament". It really does look as if the current Labour Government have lost the ability to put any of its announcements into effect. I suppose that's what happens when a Government makes policy announcements for the purposes of winning headlines rather than for improving the lot of the British people. Its no surprise that I've met no-one who believes a word of what Alistair Darling said in his budget speech last week.

And by the way, did any of you see Liam Byrne making himself look ridiculous on Newsnight tonight, when he tried to defend Gordon Brown's position on the 'expenses' fiasco - following Sir George Young's casual final scuppering of the PM's loopy proposals. Labour continue to be in office, but they can no longer be said to be in power.

5 comments:

penlan said...

They are unable simply to say that the money is no longer there.Instead they come up with ridiculous excuses("the result of consultation"-when has that ever been heeded before?).They don't realise that people would prefer an honest answer.

Glyn Davies said...

Penlan - Problem for the Government is that the people have simply stopped believing them.

'DC' - 'spin this' said...

U mean to say Glyn that the Labour government hasn't got a bad story to bury the U-turns under?

I'm shocked!

Not really, but maybe Brown has lost a few slices of bread these past few days.

Labour's broken promises and incompetence in generating such huge debts is staggering.

Maybe Labour's spin-machine is spinning too fast for Labour!

alan said...

I agree with you - Labour have lost all credibility as a government in power however I'm not seeing the tories making any headway in their retaliation as the opposition.
Even in Wales I see from the NAfW website that Nick Bourne has asked nearly 70 questions of various ministers all due for response by the 5th May. I'm not sure how these things work but I guess some civil servants are going to have to spend time answering each of these individually. Is this a good use of our taxes asking for answers to 70 tedious questions that 5 or 6 really good ones could have addressed?
Please tell me this isn't the level of opposition we have come to expect from the tories and that there is a bit of quality to the blues both in the Senedd and Westminster?

aldo said...

It just shows us all how arrogant and out of touch this government and Gordon Brown has become.

I think we should all write letters to the national and local press urging people to do this simple thing come election time -

“Vote for the candidate most likely to defeat the Labour!”