the wilted rose

As if it is a harbinger of Brown’s inability to execute a general election, new storms are visible on the horizon.  There are four particulalry notable such storms today:-

1. The press reports that mortgages rates are at an all time high, whilst the pain of repossessions and homeowners defaulting on their loans kicks in.  John Redwood discusses the belief that house rises may fall.  This Brown may try to blame on the US subprime crisis – and its impacts on the financial markets – but those buffoons at the Bank of England can take much of the credit for this.  Brown, remember, gained plaudits for the Bank’s independence; was this such a good policy?

2. Taxation continues to bite, as public sector unions (we blogged on Monday of these) consider strike action:

• Tax incentives would be a good start to help workers, but of course Brown has messed up the public finances to such an extent by (as today reported, and discussed below) pumping money into the NHS with no decent outcomes, that he has also denied public sector workers their rightful pay rises.  
   
• Many private sectors firms have no such financial constraints and continue to reward staff handsomely – unless you are a low-wage earner, hamstrung by Labour’s tax/benefits system mess, of course.  And then you have to be ‘local’ to gain employment, of course, given the iniquitous “Local Employment Contracts.”

3. The Wanless Report has come up to day with clear evidence that all that money that, rightly, was pumped into the NHS has come to nought.  Of course, whilst Labour was then relied upon to pump vote-winning funds into the NHS, it did so without undertaking much in the way of reform or restructuring.  Commissions or advisers like Wanless are supposed to say ‘Government Doing Well’ but, in this case, Derek obviously wasn’t briefed sufficiently well to understand his remit … or he is, perhaps a first, an honest chair of a commission to report to the Government.

4. And let’s save for last a real corker.  This is despicability (if there is such a word) at its most despicable (synonym: Labour Party), and it comes from our favourite Labour politician, Wendy Alexander, who’s called for the Barnett formula to be rethought:

• This is not in the interests of Scotland, because it has been decreed by Gordon in order to try to sew up English votes.  Ms Alexander is supposed to be the leader of Labour in the Scottish Parliament.  She’s hardly acting in Scotland’s favour by making such an assertion.
• But then it might have something to do with the desperation with which Brown tries to dig his Government out of a hole in order to win (or at least cling on just about) a general election.  This statement has implications for Wales’s and Ulster’s funding formulae too – not good for these other parts of the UK.
• Ultimately, though, this ‘decree Browni’ (as opposed to Nissi) will help to secure the SNP’s future for generations as the Government (oh, how we relish that word, as opposed to the lily-livered-Labour word Executive), whilst Scottish Labour languishes.  More Labour MSPs will be lost and Labour MPs will fall too, in once safe Labour fiefdoms.

What is this all about, then?  It is quite simply all about a Government that is falling apart before our very eyes. 

The opinion poll slip, and the clear deflation of the Brown Bounce (which was only ever really evident in the Labour heartlands and some core voters anyway), coincides with a general coming home to roost of the chickens, i.e. the NHS, the economy etc.

Worse still is the continued denial by Jacqui Smith and others that there is, indeed, social breakdown and crime.  She recently has spoken – about time too, wethinks – and said that there is only ‘fear of crime’ and other politicians are sensationalising.  She obviously, as a Minister of State, is living in that parallel world called Westminster and does not have to take the tube or bus home like the rest of us.  Fit to Govern?  I don’t think so.

Posted by Mountjoy 12.08pm