The Meteoric Fall Of A New Labour Nonentity

Posted on February 6, 2008
Filed Under Politics |

Firstly, we need to clear up the fact that meteors do not rise, but fall.

From BadAstronomy.com:

So meteors start off in space, and then fall to the Earth. They appear dramatically, flashing into out view, and burn out suddenly, sometimes leaving a long trail of glowing ash behind them.

Secondly, we need to define zeitgeist, which is: “the spirit of the time; general trend of thought or feeling characteristic of a particular period of time”.

Thirdly, an far less easily, we need to explain who Caroline Flint is and why she has suddenly been noticed by the media.

She is, apparently, a new Housing Minister and only two weeks into the job, she thought she would make a name for herself by threatening to force tenants of social housing (what used to be called council housing until it was forcibly infected with the free market doctrines of Mrs Thatcher) to enter into contracts whereby they would be evicted if they became unemployed.

This is the sort of thing which might earn you a few plaudits from people like John Redwood or any Nazis still in hiding in South America, but it was always going to need some degree of care and thought with regard to how and when it was announced.

Clue: when the whole of government is under scrutiny for filching taxpayer money to feather the nests of MPs; when the tenuous link of trust between the governors and the governed is about to snap; when the government is seen as utterly and irredeemably incompetent in everything it does; when Gordon Brown seems to have managed to exist for several minutes without being universally mocked for being the author of yet another catastrophe - those are not the times.

So, it was pretty stupid of Caroline Flint to blithely go ahead and make announcements which were not only idiotic in their own right, but were bound to cast her own administreation as worse than the demon Mrs Thatcher’s yet again.

Even her own kind quickly deserted her:

Labour MP John McDonnell said: “To threaten to make people homeless is more brutal than anything we’ve seen since the end of the Poor Law. The new generation of ministers and advisers appear to be living up to the mantle of Thatcher’s children.

What next? Will it be the novel idea of the workhouse?”

Reaction from the homeless charity Shelter:

Adam Sampson, the head of Shelter, said: “The Government wants to return Britain’s unemployed to the workhouse by throwing them on to the streets. What is being proposed would destroy families and communities and add to the thousands who are already homeless.”

What about people who actually know something about the subject, rather than some newly appointed minister who has probably never given it a second thought until she lands a new job?

Alan Walter, of the Defend Council Housing campaign, said: “It is an outrage that any Government minister talks to council tenants like this.

“They wouldn’t dare treat homeowners in the leafy suburbs with this kind of contempt or try and make their tenure conditional on employment.”

Stupid minister, stupid government, stupid ideas, stupid bunch of failures and no-hopers, you might think.

Of course, she must have the backing of Her Majesty’s Comptroller of Control Freakery, Mr Bean, before she lets her mouth run away with her like this.

Oh, dear. Apparently not. The prime minister’s spokesman could only mutter something about a subject of debate before refusing to back her position no less than five times.

Of course, now we all know that Michael Martin, the Speaker, claims £17 000 per year for living expenses, despite being giving palatial and gratis accommodation within the Palace in Wonderland of Westminster, perhaps it would be an idea for someone to find out what level of extortion and embezzlement of taxpayer money the new housing minister applies when making her own claims from the Parliamentary slush fund.

Probably, of course, none. Which brings us back to zeitgeist.

Nobody trusts a word any politician says any more. Caroline Flint would have done better to keep her mouth shut.

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