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Brown gives his wish-list
PRIME Minister Gordon Brown made his desperate last throw of the dice yesterday as he seeks to save his failing Government but there is little in his latest legislative programme which will see him winning anything soon.
A mish-mash of already-announced measures, coupled with the ditching of Tony Blair's flagship target culture in favour of citizens' entitlements, hardly set the pulse racing, let alone amount to a coherent message.
Indeed his programme leaves more questions than answers – not least how it will be funded. In many respects it appears to be a wish-list which will never be implemented given the parlous state of the public finances.
Among the measures, building the bulk of 110,000 new affordable homes has already been announced while plans to press ahead with four carbon capture and storage power plants, which are likely to bring significant benefits to Yorkshire, have also been widely trailed.
The creation of 1.5 million new skilled jobs in hi-tech industries of the future over the next five years appears fanciful at best. Efforts to force under-25s out of work for a year into a guaranteed job, work experience or training or face losing their benefits are welcome but in practice unworkable.
The abolition of the few remaining hereditary peers from the House of Lords is a step forward but merely cleans up a constitutional mess of Labour's own making.
NHS patient entitlements to speedier treatment simply enshrine targets which have already been achieved. They are a major improvement on what was available a decade ago but there must be serious doubts they can be maintained in future as public spending cuts bite.
Plans to give local people the opportunity to hold local police to account at monthly beat meetings and vote on how offenders pay back their communities simply smack of gimmickry.
Mr Brown's obsession with spending his way out of the recession – laudable though that might be in comparison to the disaster which befell Britain in the recession of the 1980s – ignores the economic reality and, what is more, it is irresponsible.
It is difficult to argue with Tory leader David Cameron's accusation that the Prime Minister is living in a "dream world".
The concern must be that for ordinary Britons it will soon turn into a nightmare.
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Sunday 12 February 2012
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