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The triumph of Tony rolls on. And on. The troops have all been sent on extended leave singing his praises as we go. His poll ratings are back to pre-election levels. The other party leaders dance attendance and endorse terror legislation - which will I hope apply to Irish terrorism just as much as Al-Qaeda.. So Tony`s in his heaven when all’s wrong with the world. I can`t resist the cynical thought that one more bomb attempt and the entire Labour Party will be queuing up to ask him to stay on as president for life.
I don’t know about your area but I’m finding that the new obsession with targets for crimes dealt with is having a counter-productive effect in my neck of the woods.
The targets are working. The kind of crimes covered – violence, burglary vehicle crime - are all coming down substantially. Particularly in the areas off social deprivation where crime is highest. Unfortunately, though, the concentration of police effort on these crimes means that there are no cops available to deal with what you might call soft or social crime: the kind which causes most annoyance: yobs, rowdy teenagers congregating, vandalism, drunken behaviour, neighbour disputes and all the rest of it. So people who ring to call the police to these get no response and no explanation of the failure to respond. So they’re angry and the atmosphere in the deprived areas of town is turning nasty, frustrated by the feeling that they’re unprotected.
These events aren’t dealt with because there’s so little the police can do - kids clear the scene and vandals vanish before the police arrive. So there’s little possibility of any arrest and cases are very difficult to clear up. So the cops don`t come.
The result is inevitable. The kind of zero tolerance policing tackling every minor infringement which has been successful in the US is not possible in the UK, with the result that deprived parts of town get the feeling that lawlessness is out of control and things are getting worse rather than better.
The new tactic isn’t going to work without either more police, some other authority group, such as Wardens or Specials, or even Hazel Blears patrolling the streets. It also needs a greater social involvement by the neighbourhood and by strategic partnerships concentrating on those areas where the problem is greatest. The last election demonstrated clearly that it`s no use telling people crime is down when all around them convinces them that it`s up.
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News of yet another Labour Party proposal to persuade geriatric MPs (like myself, though I don`t admit it) to step down and make way for the kind of young meteors Tony likes to bring in. Then the rising stars can get to know the constituency while the existing MP declines into senescence. Or worse. They could even decline into a mindless following of party policy.
Yet apart from being a bit premature (like three years early) and conducted without reference to the local Party, the proposal is barmy. Any MP who agrees to it is a dead duck. That isn’t exactly why they wanted to be elected in the first place.
Labour doesn’t like the voice of experience. It speaks from a different age and a different party which believed, not in whatever leaders want it to believe, but in equality, redistribution, better education for all, not just the elite, and stronger, more effective trade unions. None of this is top of Tony’s hit parade.
Then there’s the final problem. What MP is going to agree to go early without something in return? Like a place in the House of Lords, an ambassadorship to a small, untroubled country like Luxembourg, or a decent interesting job to do in Parliament. The Whips don`t want that. They’d rather lavish these jobs on Tony’s chosen chaps and chapesses.
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The Chief Executive of Tony Blair’s local council, Sedgefield, has written to me (copies to his local MP, someone called Blair, and to John Prescott and his acceptable face, Yvette Cooper), to say how naughty I was to accuse the Council of bringing the ballot on council house privatisation forward, as has happened in too many other cases.
In fact, union representatives preparing to put out a briefing on the case against, were assured by Council officials on the Monday of the week the ballot was launched that the ballot was not going ahead early and the Chief Executive would make an announcement on Thursday. Next day the ballot papers arrive in every home posted on Monday. The Electoral Reform Society which runs the ballots tells me they have no control over this kind of trick, which has been used in North East Lincolnshire and elsewhere, because councils call the ballot. They did, however, tell me that the majority of voters are cast in the first four days. Which in Sedgefield, as in Grimsby, means before any counter arguments reached the tenants. |
