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Written by Austin Mitchell
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07 March 2005 |
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The briefings from the Brownies that Gordon is to be brought back to running Labour’s election campaign and Alan Milburn demoted may be just a touch of tat for tittery for keeping out the People’s Gordon in the first place. Yet they indicate a problem...
Our approach has been aggressive exposing Tony to tough questioning and attacking the Tories on the grounds that life will be hell if they get in. They’ve responded with equal aggression that Labour wastes money, and that health and education are in a mess. The result has been to confuse and alienate the squeamish.
A Gordon approach will be to concentrate on the economy and social advances and say “look how well we’ve done for you”. Which runs up against the paradox that a better off nation grumbles more. Redistribution by tax credits is good but people think it’s a free gift from a kind hearted Inland Revenue, rather than a Labour Party policy. So is there enough in the record to stir apathetic Labour supporters to get out and vote?
That’s Labour’s dilemma. I see no way of resolving it. Except a very generous budget on l6 March.
The Tory approach meanwhile is to squeeze every available boil on Labour`s bum. Preferably with heart tugging examples of the sick, the maimed, the halt and the lame who’ve been failed by the system. No matter how much money you pump into the health service there are still going to be failings and but there’s no logic in the argument that it will be more efficient with less money.
The Tories are in that situation because of their obsession with tax cuts following the example of Reagan and Bush. The argument here is that tax cuts will regenerate the economy. The logic there is that they impose a ceiling on what government can do. “Don’t feed the beast”. With less revenue coming in government services have to be cut back in the way Bush is now attempting. That may work in America where they don’t fear the huge deficits that result. It won’t here because the Tories dare not say what they want to cut.
The Liberals will be the only party to do well out of all this. That’s frustrating to we tired old parties bound down by reality. Yet I’m mystified by their new slogan. “The Better Alternative”. To what ?
The basic problem with the terrorist legislation Charles Clarke is hoping to rush through the House of Lords this week isn’t just that it affronts basic principles of justice. It’s that it is being done on the say-so of the Security Services.
It’s gallant of Sir John Stevens to earn his pension by coming to the support of the government and telling us there’s a major threat from a hundred or so people roaming the countryside. This is the man who sent tanks to Heathrow because of a real and imminent threat, then had to be forced reluctantly to take them out by a furious David Blunkett.
The Security Services tell us they know all about the terrorists incarcerated in Bellmarsh (though apparently most of them are so redeemed by prison that they can now be let out. Prison Works.) and about others stalking the country. But they can neither tell us nor produce the information in court.
Security Services always talk in this mystical fashion. They have to justify their existence .But these same Security Services told us Weapons of Mass Destruction not only posed an enormous threat from Iraq but could be used in 45 minutes. Thinking back a little further it’s the same service which, smelling something subversive in Yorkshire Television, sent Harry Newton along as their agent to keep an eye on us.
The Bill scraped through the Commons but the government will be forced to make more concessions to the Lords this week. Now they’ve come up with the ludicrous proposal to have it enforced by private security firms. Why not traffic wardens with power to clamp and tow away?
Why are we bothering with this folly, dividing the party and making ourselves look panic stricken just eight weeks before an election? |
