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| A Queen's speech delivering "opportunity and security"? Opportunism more like, given Tony Blair's blatant overplaying of the law and order card. |
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| To remind us that we are living in a climate of fear, Labour spin doctors even had the Daily Mail's front page this morning claiming that al-Qaida was going to crash airliners into Canary Wharf. Odd coincidence this should crop up today. |
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| David Blunkett's addiction to macho initiatives is wearing awfully thin. Since 1997 there have been 30 criminal justice bills. (References to "the causes of crime" are so scant in these bills that only the most sensitive instruments can detect them). And what is the result? Police numbers fell; 1m more violent crimes a year; 1 million hard drug addicts for the first time; and 1m more crimes now go unsolved. |
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| The practical way to increase detection and deterrence is by reducing red tape on the police and increasing police numbers by a third - as the Conservatives propose. But instead we have another nine new bills. Jury-less, anti-terror trials and more wire-tap evidence; compulsory testing for drugs on arrest not on charge; naming and shaming of youth offenders in local newspapers. And then the big one: ID cards - except not for several years. |
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| Perhaps Philip Gould got round to telling Mr Blair that 80% of middle England want them and that it was a good manifesto idea. But this major shift in power from the individual to the state troubles not just right wing libertarians. Let us hope that some Labour Cabinet Ministers and backbenches oppose ID cards in public as much as they do in private. Let us also hope that their Lordships perform the invaluable service of taking the more knee jerk draconian measures to pieces so we can start again. Blair clearly believes Middle England will only continue to go along with New Labour if they think the party is hard on thugs and Islamic terrorists. The problem with devoting a speech to all this is that it downgrades Gordon Brown's agenda for fairness and social justice. (Today's reheating of 16 to 19-year-olds' vocational training plans doesn't really count). |
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| True, Gordon will have his day at budget time (and may talk about better child care). But this was not a Queen's speech that majored on the big economic, pension and welfare issues. It skated over the biggest policy problems British society faces: five thousand people each year die of infections they catch in hospital; the asylum and immigration system is in crisis; one in five school-leavers are functionally illiterate; at a time when Bush is in the White House the armed forces are to be squeezed; long-term pensions and savings are looking like basket cases after seven years of ministerial muddle and incompetence. |
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| A Conservative alternative Queen's speech would involve fewer words but more action: more police; school discipline; clean hospitals; controlled immigration; and lower taxes. |
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| Mr Blair's "crime and punishment" speech was shameless electoral posturing. Let us hope that it is Blair who receives the punishment - at the ballot box next spring. |
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