Today was one of those days that British Governments dread. First of all a sex scandal involving the most surprising chararacter. You know cynicism has set in when the presenter of a daytime magazine program on TV voices her suspicion that it was published in a Labour favoring newspaper to cover up another embarrasment of a political scandal in one of the senior departments of state. That was so bad the Home Secretary (for ’twas the jug-eared minister himself) had to go before the Commons and explain himself and Blair had to explain why he had not accepted his resignation. Finally, the Health Secretary was booed and jeered when she tried to make a speech to the normally sedate Royal College of Nurses, abandoned that for a question and answer session and then got slow handclapped off. Even that debacle had an up side in that it concealed a reversal of health policy although that stored up some problems for later.
First let’s get the sex scandal out of the way. The Daily Mirror printed a story on Wednesday morning revealing that John Prescott, the corpulent bruiser of a Deputy Prime Minister, had a two year affair with his secretary. Prescott is sometimes seen as an amiable baffoon – a sort of British George Bush who manages to eat pretzels and everything else in sight. His analysis of a major shift in the political landscape was that “the Teutonic plates have moved”. The man is actually a thug. Normally a British politician would shrug off an egg landing on his shoulder. Prescott weighed into the crowd to attack the thrower, fists flying. Hardly the most ecologically minded, he rejected a ministerial hybrid car in favor of the gas guzzling option and is nicknamed “two Jags” for his liking for Jaguar cars.
Now the affair would not normally cause as much comment if it were not that “two shags” Prescott has slammed the Conservatives for their lack of morals when he was in opposition. In a speech to a Labour Party conference before the 1997 General Election he condemned their apparent attitude it was OK to do anything so long as you did not get caught.
Far worse for Blair was the complete incompetence of the Home Secretary, Charles Clarke in handling another grand cock-up. After a lot of prevaracation it was finally revealled this week that large numbers of foreign nationals who had been in jail had not been considered for deportation before they had been released from prison. In some cases this was despite the recommendation by the original trial judge that they should be considered for this treatment (that is as far as judges are allowed to go but their remarks are usually adhered to because of the seriousness of crimes that warrant them). Clarke had made things worse for himself claiming on BBC’s Newsnight on Tuesday that since he was made aware of the problem in August last year, only a “very very small number” of foreign prisoners had been released without their cases being reviewed. That “very very small number” turned out to be 288.
On Tuesday evening a Downing Street spokeman told the press that he had not offered his resignation. Later it turned out that he was in fact offering it to Blair at the time. Blair refused to accept it but later had to admit in the Commons that he had not known about the 288 until Wednesday morning. The matter took up most of Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday and then Blair scuttled out to the jeers of the Opposition. Then Clarke had to give a statement to the house, standing to make it to cries of “you’re on your own”.
To make this matter worse, Clarke’s Permanant Secretary (his senior civil servant) later told a Commons committee that the 288 represented an increased rate of release without review. Not yet fully realised is that the position was pointed out in reports by senior civil servants in January 2002 and again in 2004. The names of most of the 288 had only been notified to the police on Tuesday evening with a request to trace their current location.
By contrast the problems Patricia Hewitt, the Health Secretary, had at the Royal College of Nurses conference may seem minor. Admittedly it comes after she had been jeered addressing a Unison (the public service workers’ union) earlier in the week. To be frank there has been a lot of cash pumped into the NHS system but most of it has gone on expensive new buildings and quite justifiable rises in nurses’ and (to a lesser extent supportable) Doctor’s pay. There have also been changes in working patterns that have increased pay costs because of having to employ more people to cover. Sadly this has been sabotaged by a new system of making the local health area administrations change the basis of their acounting so they cannot carry forward deficits without big penalties. A lot of these have built up because of the imposition of targets and maximum permissible waits for treatments. The net result of this has been that in the last couple of weeks, a number of redundancies have been announced, currently standing at about 8000. The grievence over this bubbled over at the RCN meeting where Hewitt just seemed out of touch with the reality of thier experience.
Again, later in the day further news revealed the reveral of a policy that Labour had to improve the waiting list positions. They had contracted out relatively minor surgical operations like knee joints and hernias to private operators. Now they have cancelled the contracts for further units to be built. Such is the bad press that electors are now starting to downgrade Labour’s performance on health, one of their biggest advantages over the Tories.
If Labour thinks that “things can only get better” (their 1997 campaign song), they are going to be disappointed. There are a series of political minefields already coming up. May sees local elections at the start of the month and a parliamentary by-election at the end. Labour are expected to do badly though this is being heavily forecast so that if they are not a complete disaster, the analysis will look too pessimistic and they can claim they did better than predicted. The police are still investigating the “coronets for cash” scandal and have already made an arrest. Charges against Labour party bigwigs could follow. Further trouble is expected with legislation on education and Lords reform. Blair and his Chancellor and presumed successor Gordon Brown are said not to be on speaking terms. The obvious solution would be for Blair to re-shuffle his ministers but he is rapidly running out of his loyalists. The only people with the capability to run the senior ministries are mostly Brownites. The “men in grey suits” could be knocking on the door of 10 Downing Street any day now.