|
Still Not the Yorkshire Post. But better than great slabs of prejudiced prose on the opinion and edi |
|
|
|
|
Written by Austin Mitchell
|
|
28 February 2005 |
|
Welcome back Alistair. Your Prime Minister needs you to be coherent. So does your party. You should never have gone into show biz. Sadly in those months off you’ve lost the old sureness of touch if not your mastery of the ffffing language.
We’ll win. Britain is enjoying the politics of complacency and when things are gong well; long incumbencies are the norm. Everyone’s better off. There’s no pressing desire to turn the Government out.
Instead of general discontents the politics of prosperity breed particularism.What angers people is not the Government but each other driven by largely imaginary fears of other groups from yobs to youth thugs to immigrants and asylum seekers. From progressive teaching to scroungers.
The Tories are trying to stitch all these together into a manifesto and according to the polls, its doing them some good. It won’t however bring them to power. A collection of negatives however numerous don’t make a positive. Just a passport to loony-land.
A good example is the Tory poster appearing in marginal seats all over Yorkshire “What’s wrong with a little discipline in schools?” Nothing of course. But who’s proposing less discipline or none at all? Why don’t the Tories pluck up their courage, say what they really mean and ask more basic questions like “What’s wrong with taking knives, Kalashnikovs and nuclear weapons off kids in schools?” Perhaps a bit long for the billboard.
I didn’t stick around to vote against Charles Clark’s barmy security legislation. The only question to ask about it is ‘why the hell it is necessary when a quarter century of IRA threats has produced nothing like this?’
I have the answer. Tony has created this problem by poking his stick into a wasp’s nest giving it a shake then forcing us all to wear protective clothing. Why should we trust security services who have made so many mistakes to be able to pick out who’s a terrorist and who’s not? There are two simple answers. Firstly Bush wants us to. Second there’s an election coming and a bit of fear creation works wonders.
Patricia Hewitt is daft announcing that straight after the election Tony will “hit the ground running” to fight for the E.U. Constitution. That would be against our agreement to leave the issue alone but more important it would provide a good reason for the Euro-sceptic majority not to vote for him, whereas now the European issue and the government issue can be separated with the former postponed to 2006.Combining the two now doesn’t help the government so stick to the agreement Tony. |
