baldysblog.co.uk

The question that surrounds the Home Secretary is whether she can survive in her current job, the answer I suspect is that yes she can and will, but not because of any personal merit. Without being partisan, she has a poor track record, has demonstrated that she is incompetent, unlucky or a combination of both plus has a very marginal seat.

Bearing in mind the the former “Home Office” has been divided into two, Home and Justice, one wonders just how much worse she might have been with the full job. However the truth is that she is symptomatic of a Government on its last legs and is hardly much different from all the other talentless deadbeats that collect around the Cabinet Table in Drowning Street.

The Reality…

In fact Jacqui Smith is “protected” in her current travails from two very different directions. Within the Labour Cabinet she is oh so the average which broadly speaking means, there just isn’t any talent at the top of the Labour Party. This worse thing that can happen is a game of musical chairs in a Cabinet Reshuffle.

On the second front, her claiming the Additional Allowance for her family home in her constituency whilst staying with her sister in London and nominating that as her primary residence, she is protected from another direction. Whilst this is within the “Rules” technically, it is most certainly morally wrong however you look at it but, very many MPs on all sides of the House are guilty of doing the same, so who will kick up a fuss ?

The Need for Competition…

Leaving aside the very outside possibility of a “rescue” for Labour, come the morning of June 4^th 2010, they will be out of Office and that is when their problems will really start and could result in a major split between “Old” and “New” Labour and whilst I am Right of Centre and don’t like the Labour Party, I do not want to see this for the following reasons:

Democracy is closely aligned with “Competition” and regardless of personal political preferences, there needs to be the option of an alternative to the current incumbents to keep the Executive in check. One only has to look at the mess the Tories were in for over 8 years and unchecked, the disastrous policies pursued by Blair and Brown.

To me it is amazing the total lack of progress being made by the Libdems in the polls. With a terribly unpopular and failing Government, this should be their “breakthrough” election when they have a serious chance of becoming the second largest UK Party but, nothing…

The Tory lead which seems to have settled around 40% with Labour on 30% only fluctuates with whether Labour going down plus the Libdems varying by a few points, this is really not good, if they (Libdems), were viable they should be taking votes from both Labour as well as the Tories and clearly they are not, they are still seen as “Tory Protest Vote” or, “Tory Lite” rather than anything distinctive in their own right.

The Labour Party

Needs an enema to clear out both the “New Labour” and “Old Labour” camps both of whom think Keir Hardy is a a wine bar drink of some kind. The real problem is that the Blair Brown feud which started sometime in 1994, has across the intervening 15 years, totally “hollowed out” the Labour Party to the extent that there are no “Young Turks” waiting in the wings and ready to take Labour forward. A whole generation of future Labour politicians has been totally obliterated, their careers tainted and stunted by Blair/Brown as a look around the Cabinet Table rather shows.

Whilst it is possible that there is someone already there who will suddenly and unexpectedly “blossom” into the Leader that unites the party and takes it forward, it does not currently seem very likely plus, having been tried, the very idea of Big Government, High Taxation and Centralised Control are all very bankrupt as political ideas as the economic state of the Country shows only too vividly.

The Conservatives

They are almost certainly going to be the next Government but, between now and May 2010, they must lay down in very clear terms based upon the current costs to the taxpayer, a reform of MPs payment packages which will show inevitably, an apparent increase in what MPs get paid although if handled from the perspective of current actual costs, will be no uplift at all.

However, such reforms should go hand in glove with a promised reduction in the number of MPs from the current 640 to 650 down to 500 by the following General Election plus, the immediate abolition of the current MPs pension scheme based upon final salary and its replacement with a “defined contribution” or “money purchase” scheme.

Before they get into power, they need to establish these reforms as key policies, once in power, they will be too busy dealing with the mess to deal with the whining objections they will get from all sides of the House, it needs to be nailed down now.

Conclusion

The Tories will be far too busy over the next 5 years to deviate too much from fire fighting and trying to get the public deficits into some kind of likely balance, many of the required measures will be unpopular but, they need to always be open and honest with the electorate.

On the other side, we the electorate need to see if come the next General Election in 2014/15, we have sufficient independent candidates to ensure that no party will ever again have an outright majority.