Rat Flees Sinking Ship

The BBC are reporting that Ruth Kelly is to stand down as MP for Bolton West and will not be seeking re-election. Ms Kelly is claiming that she made the decision because she wants to spend more time with her family and children.

Could it be that the old left-wing fanatic is afraid of losing her seat at the next election, which she currently holds with only a slim majority of around two thousand votes?

Whatever the true reason for her departure, good riddance I say. Unfortunately however, the damage she helped cause in her time as Education Secretary under Tony Blair’s premiership will not be undone by her political demise.

Ruth Kelly, like so many of her Ministerial predecessors across the decades, presided over the imposition of increasingly pitiful state education on the poorest in Britain while, as emerged earlier this year, allowing her own children to escape the system by sending them to good public schools. Of course, afraid of the public backlash that her hypocrisy would have sparked, she desperately attempted to suppress the truth before the story broke.

Unsurprisingly, Ms Kelly’s arrogant and hypocritical stance is not unique within the Labour party. Diane Abbott famously described her own decision to send her child to a public school despite being against them and for the hopeless state educational system in this country as, ‘indefensible’.

Conservative Thames Victory

The Conservative candidate, John Howell has comfortably won the by-election in Henley as originally predicted with a small swing to the Conservatives while the Labour vote collapsed.

However, the Liberal Democrats share of the vote did also increase slightly despite the fact that they spent more time playing the man rather than the ball in what was for them a typically ‘negative’ by-election campaign.

While overall turnout fell it would appear that the Conservative vote held up reasonably well especially when considering that this was not a high profile by-election in the eyes of the national media in the same way as Crewe and Nantwich.

Much hard work and effort was put into this campaign by MPs and party activists who, much like David Cameron this morning, will no doubt be very pleased by this result as it vindicated their ‘positive’ campaigning approach without revealing actual policies.

This may hint that the Conservative voting electorate are in some respects optimistic that David Cameron will be more conservative in Government than he is saying he will be in opposition.

The Great Deception

Today in the Daily Telegraph, Bruno Waterfield confirms that the EU and the Irish Government have indeed been working on plans to implement the Lisbon Treaty even if the Irish people vote against the document in their referendum.

Since the Irish Government is not required to hold a referendum on an enlargement treaty, the remaining Lisbon protocols could easily be slipped past the Irish electorate when Croatia joins the European Union in 2009 or 2010.

This really is as much as to be expected. When faced with the thorny issue of ‘Europe’ even the usual pretence of democracy disappears out the window as national governments and ministers fall over one another to please their European masters and deny their own electorates a say on their future.

Equally unsurprisingly were yesterday’s events and the way in which this country’s political class and media had everyone looking the other way again when it could have mattered.

Last night in the House of Lords a coalition of Labour and Liberal Democrat Lords defeated a Conservative bid to force a Referendum by 280 to 218 votes, but most people were too busy focusing on the House of Commons vote on the Government’s amendments to its forty two day detention policy.

Click here to continue reading the article…

Whatever Happened To The Heroes?

Well, that is that then. Not even close. 248 voted for a Referendum and to keep their promise. 311 did not. Quite simple really, if very unfortunate.

Whatever happened to the heroes? And I am of course not referring to Leon Trotsky, Lenny, The Great Elmyra or Sancho Panza. What of all those supposed one hundred plus Labour MPs who it was originally claimed would rebel and vote for a referendum?

In reality they probably never existed. When it came to the crunch, the vote and the heavy hand of the party whip, they were found severely wanting. Even so, I suspect that in their heart of hearts a few Labour MPs know that voting down a Referendum was both wrong and completely dishonest. Perhaps they may well live to regret their decision – or not.

Still, at the end of the day who cares, right? The British public are not intelligent enough to understand such a complex Treaty and set of documents even if they tried – or so was insinuated by many Government Ministers throughout Parliamentary discussion in the Commons today. And really, why would the political class care? Their MPs gold plated pensions, perks and salaries will be there tomorrow and long after this EU Constitution has disappeared from the political horizon.