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Written by Austin Mitchell
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17 February 2005 |
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NOT THE YORKSHIRE POST. AGAIN l5 Feb
“Vote for us. We’re not the Tories”. “Vote for Tony. He’s not Michael Howard” will be the themes of our election campaign. Indeed, the most exciting part if the six bland pledges are the policy.
The six all depend on the pledge that durst not speak its name. That’s housing, an issue all previous Labour governments have done well on. But where our record on house building is the worst since the war.
None of the other pledges ,”children achieving”, “health improving”, “communities safe”, can be achieved without more and better housing so that kids can study health improve and communities be brought together. Even “safer borders” is difficult if you don’t have housing to put detainees under house arrest!
Instead of building the huge numbers of houses we need we’ve waged an ideological war against council housing. Diminishing supply at a time of rising demand for houses has created a house price spiral which makes it impossible for first time buyers to get on the escalator. That in turn needs for more social housing . Yet we’ve built less.
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The two party system provides governments with a permanent built in justification for almost anything. The weaker the case for a policy the more ministers abuse the opposition.
Last week provided two marvellous examples. Charles Clark berated the opposition for being divided on Identity cards (just like us) instead of defending the cards against the accusations that they will be expensive, unnecessary and generally useless.
Jack Straw hardly bothered to defend the indefensible EU Constitution, or justify the fact that he’s allowing only three day’s debate on it. Instead he railed on about Tory divisions and the impossibility of their renegotiating anything to do with Europe.
Government’s threat that we’ll be isolated if we reject the constitution is just nonsense. The EU will still want us in to keep buying their overpriced food and paying over the odds into the budget. So if we don’t accept this constitution there’ll be another along in a while. Indeed, Europe being what it is, working remorselessly towards ever closer union, there’ll be another one along soon anyway.
Yet I abstained rather than vote against the constitution. We Eurosceptics have a deal. We won’t bang on about Europe before the election if Tone doesn’t either. After that its open slather and more MacShaneless panegyrics of the E.U. So I didn’t want to breach the unity of the massed ranks of Labour Euro sceptics, all of whom voted for a treaty they hate.
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A YP reader writes to suggest that the editor gave me the push because New Labour, which doesn’t like being criticised, had leaned on him to give me the Thomas A Beckett treatment. Dunno. Though that might explain why he kept David Currie’s column. David’s much kinder to the government, particularly on Europe, than I am, and he’s happy to describe Tory policies as “batty”. Which most of them are. So Labour would rather have him.
One man’s independent mindedness is another’s bloody nuisance but I can’t resist another dose of mine. Michael Howard’s last proposal to replace Police Committees with elected Police Commissioners is a good one. It should give citizens the direct input to raise complaints they don’t have now.
End of disloyalty. This week is the start of the phoney war in which the people have to make up their minds whether to vote for Hugh Grant, Bella Lugosi or Mickey Rooney (that dates me). So that’s the last time I’ll be saying anything favourable about the Tories. Always assuming we don’t steal more of their policies. I won’t be saying anything critical of New Labour in the Yorkshire Post either. Here is another matter. Soldiers of Tone arise and put your armour on. |
