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Bulldog
Site Admin
Joined: 11 Aug 2005
Posts: 18693
Location: (Formerly) Great Britain
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 Posted:
Tue 30 Jun 2009 1 31 pm |
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Labour has spent 12 years constructing Britain’s future but nothing has gone up – and we don’t have a quote for the costs
In 1997, Tony Blair promised it would be “New Labour, New Life for Britain”. By 2001 the party was offering to fulfil “Britain’s Great Potential”. In 2005, it was “Britain: Forward not Back”. Yesterday Gordon Brown published “Building Britain’s Future”.
If it sounded familiar, that’s because it was. It was a relaunch made up of rehashed policy announcements and repackaged spending commitments, less a national plan than a national repeat. More affordable housing, health checks, one-to-one tuition, docking benefits, Lords reform — these are all things that have been promised for months, in some cases years, by the Government. It is only three months since the last relaunch, a “strategic plan” called “Building Britain’s Future”. Clearly not much building has gone on since then.
“Our most enduring reforms have come when we are boldest,” the Prime Minister wrote in the foreword — a deliberate echo, perhaps, of his predecessor’s declaration that “we are at our best when at our boldest”, which Mr Brown countered at the time with the phrase “at our best when Labour”. The reality is, however, markedly less courageous than the rhetoric.
There was an eye-catching initiative designed to appeal to BNP voters — the promise to give priority to local people for council housing — but like Mr Blair’s plan to march yobs to cash machines it is far from clear how it will work. The switch from targets to entitlements is more about presentation than substance: it is hard to see how it can make much difference to exam results or waiting lists. It’s also unenforceable, unless ministers plan to allow every parent and patient to sue if they are unhappy with the service they get.
The problem is that Labour has already spent 12 years on this construction project and the voters are getting sick of the number of tea breaks. It’s not that nothing has been built so far — there have been real improvements in primary schools and the NHS. But if this building firm wants to be rehired it needs some attractive new plans — a loft conversion, say, or a conservatory — it can’t just offer to repaint the walls. The Government seems to have run out of money as well as ideas. Even the current refurbishment is, as Lord Mandelson has now confirmed, uncosted.
And everyone knows you don’t hire builders without a written quotation, particularly when money is tight.
snip
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/rachel_sylvester/article6605167.ece |
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